Roswell Daily Record
Vol. 124, No. 75 75¢ Daily / $1.25 Sunday
THE VOICE OF THE PECOS VALLEY
March 28, 2015
Saturday
www.rdrnews.com
Energy expert predicts $1.60 gallon gas By Jeff Tucker Record Staff Writer
Gasoline prices in New Mexico could drop to as low as $1.60 a gallon this year as the United States and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries engage in an outgoing crude oil price war, an expert told the New Mexico Landmen’s Association on Friday. Dr. Daniel Fine, associate director of the New Mexico Center for Energy Policy at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, said at the landmen’s association’s monthly meeting Friday that crude oil storage in the United States is at a near maximum, meaning it will be some time before crude oil prices rebound. While the price war is likely to result in a “stalemate” between U.S. oil pro-
ducers and OPEC members such as Saudi Arabia, Fine said crude oil consumers, particularly motorists, are likely to experience unusually low prices at the pumps for months to come. Fine predicted gasoline prices in the Albuquerque market for the remainder of 2015 would rise slightly to $2.35 a gallon before leveling off somewhere between $2.35 and $1.65 per gallon. He said gasoline prices in Albuquerque could drop to as low as $1.60 a gallon. “I would use that as the bottom range,” Fine told the Daily Record after his hour-long address to the landmen’s meeting at the Roswell Country Club. “I can’t say how soon. That will depend on the events now in front of us.” Fine said summertime gasoline prices should be somewhere under $2 a gallon. He said if gaso-
line prices drop to $1.65 a gallon, those would be the lowest gasoline prices in the United States since 1998. Soft market demand and excess supplies of crude oil are to credit, or to blame, for the low gasoline prices, Fine said. “Demand is not catching up,” he said. “You have a big imbalance. (OPEC) is not producing according to price. They’re not cutting back.” Fine said at the start of his speech he had come to the landmen’s meeting “to present some realism.” “I don’t carry good news, but I carry a guidance based on some realism,” he said. Crude oil in the West Texas Intermediate market was selling for $102 a gallon in January 2014 and is now down to about $50 a gallon, Fine said.
Technological gains in the United States have made the shale-oil boom possible, he said. “The breakthrough came in precision horizontal drilling, not hydraulic fracturing. That’s been around,” Fine said. “That part is the American oil power of technology at work, and was a big surprise to the Saudis and OPEC. No one saw this happening.” Fine said many economists assumed Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil producers would cut back production last year as crude oil prices plummeted. “That was a universal bet,” Fine said. “From Thanksgiving on, we’re in this oil price war crisis.” Fine said new drilling bits, coupled with horizontal precision drilling, have enabled one U.S. company, Tulsa, Oklahoma-based WPX Energy, to reduce rig
Jeff Tucker Photo
Dr. Daniel Fine, left, associate director of the New Mexico Center for Energy Policy at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, speaks with local oil men Rory McMinn of Reed & Stevens (center) and Bob Armstrong of Armstrong Energy Corp. after speaking Friday at the monthly meeting of the New Mexico Landmen’s Association in Roswell. drilling time from 47 days to eight days. “We’ve had a horizontal precision revolution, now we’re having innovation on top of that, meaning the
U.S. is too good,” Fine said. “The shale producers here are too good at what we do. We continue through techSee ENERGY, Page A3
Sexual-assault claim at juvenile center under investigation
Art bags for home-delivered meals
Bill Moffitt Photo
Volunteers with the Comfort Keepers Feed Seniors Now initiative accepted bags for the J.O.Y. Center Home Delivered Meals Program. Old-style paper grocery bags were purchased for $10 and then decorated by artists, non-artists, children and corporations. The $10 purchase will provide a hand-delivered meal for a day to a home-bound resident of Chaves County. The meals will be delivered inside the bags. The bags are now on display at Main Street Arts and the Roswell J.O.Y. Center. Pictured are Peggy Krantz, gallery owner, and Pat Hittle, past president of the Roswell Fine Arts League.
ALBUQUERQUE (AP) — A southern New Mexico juvenile detention center is the focus of a State Police investigation into a male detainee’s claim that a female staff therapist sexually assaulted him. The director of the state’s juvenile justice services has resigned and two administrators have been placed on paid administrative leave since the alleged assault was reported in early February, the Albuquerque Journal reported Friday. All of the youths detained at the Lincoln Pines Youth Center near Ruidoso have been relocated to other facilities while authorities investigate what happened at the center. The therapist no longer works for the state Children, Youth and Families
Department,0 spokesman Henry Varela said. He wouldn’t say whether she was fired or quit. Varela said the allegation was reported to State Police on Feb. 8. But he would not say when the assault allegedly occurred. A s k e d wh e th er th e re could be other victims, Varela said: “That’s what’s currently being investigated by State Police. The department is taking this seriously. Obviously, that’s why a full assessment was done right away.” Juvenile Justice Services director Sandra Stewart submitted her resignation Monday. She didn’t specify a reason. She previously served as See CLAIM, Page A3
Partisan wrangling Liakos, Roswell’s ‘Dr. Welby,’ dies at age 80 stunted state’s law enforcement reforms By Jeff Jackson Record City Editor
ALBUQUERQUE (AP) — Partisan wrangling in the New Mexico Legislature ended a number of bills sought by the state’s police agencies, including a measure requiring sheriffs to actually be law enforcement officers. State lawmakers failed to get the sheriff requirement bill out of committee while they debated such measures as daylight savings time and allowing wine and beer home delivery. They also failed to pass a bill
setting limits on the use of drones by police without a warrant. In addition, a measure that would have banned the use of solitary confinement on juveniles languished without passing. Partisan fighting also killed funding for equipment for small law enforcement agencies. The backlog came as the Republican-controlled House and the DemocratSee REFORMS, Page A2
A longtime pediatrician and philanthropist in Roswell, Dr. William G. Liakos Sr., died Monday at his home at the age of 80. Liakos founded his practice, BCA Medical Associates, in 1968, and served the community’s children with care and compassion, his son and daughter said. “He did a bunch of stuff in the community,” said his son, William Jr., himself a doctor who now oversees BCA (Babies, Children and Associates) Pediatrics. “When he first came here he made a push to modernize baby care. Roswell didn’t have any of that
then. I think he was very focused in the community of Roswell, trying to make this a better place. They provided a lot of free care back in the day. He used to barter for services before Medicaid, it essentially didn’t exist then. He’d take a quarter of a pig or beef for payment, which was common in those days.” The Liakos family has heard from friends all over New Mexico and the country expressing their condolences, said daughter Kee Liakos. “He loved the fact that he was able to care for thousands of patients and families and seeing them grow,” she said. “He was part of the fiber and fabric of the
community for 40 years. He was deeply imbedded in the community. He was a caring, compassionate and gentle man.” Liakos worked outside his practice to become involved with several organizations, including Big Brothers Big Sisters, St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Roswell Girls Club, Leadership Roswell, the Roswell Museum and Art Center, the symphony, Roswell Assurance Home, which finds homes for displaced teens, and many others. “His legacy was those community and medical services he provided to the people of Roswell. His legacy was an outreach to peo-
Liakos ple,” Kee Liakos said. Liakos opened his practice in 1968 at a small office at Union Avenue and Second Street. His first day he tended to 20 patients and had needed his wife, Kay, See LIAKOS, Page A3
NY mayor says someone may have ‘inappropriately’ tapped gas line NEW YORK (AP) — Someone may have improperly tapped a gas line before an explosion that leveled three apartment buildings and injured nearly two dozen people, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Friday as firefighters soaked the still-smoldering buildings and police searched for at least two missing people. “There is a possibility here that the gas line was inappropriately accessed internally” by people in one
of the destroyed buildings, but officials need to get access to its basement to explore it further, de Blasio said. The number of people injured in Thursday’s blast rose from 19 to 22, with four critically injured. Police were searching for at least two people: Nicholas Figueroa, a bowling alley worker who had been on a date at a sushi restaurant in the building where the destruction was centered,
Today’s Forecast
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and Moises Lucon, a worker there. Authorities also were exploring whether a third person was unaccounted for, Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said. Preliminary evidence suggests an explosion amid plumbing and gas work inside the building was to blame. Inspectors with utility Consolidated Edison had been to the East Village building to check
on ongoing work to upgrade gas service. The utility said the work didn’t pass inspection, so the new gas line was locked to ensure it wouldn’t be used, and inspectors gave instructions and left. Con Ed said inspectors didn’t smell gas. But 15 minutes later, the sushi restaurant owner smelled gas and called the landlord, who called a general contractor, Boyce said. No one called 911 or Con Ed, howev-
Index
Today’s Obituaries Page B3
• Alicia Wiley
er, de Blasio said. The contractor, Dilber Kukic, and the owner’s son went into the basement and opened a door, and then the explosion happened, burning their faces, Boyce said. The building had an existing gas line intended to serve the sushi restaurant; the work underway was to put in a bigger line to serve the entire building, Con Ed President Craig Ivey said.
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