Adrian Hedden | Carlsbad Current-Argus
Former New Mexico congressman Steve Pearce faced a committee of U.S. senators Wednesday, Feb. 25 amid his nomination to lead the federal Bureau of Land Management.
A Republican from Hobbs, Pearce served as the U.S. Representative for New Mexico’s Second Congressional District in seven terms from 2003 to 2009, and again between 2011 and 2019.
He also chaired the New Mexico Republican Party from 2018 to 2024.
The Second District contains most of southern New Mexico, including its deep-red southeast corner consisting of portions of Eddy, Lea and Chaves counties. Pearce left the post to run for New Mexico governor in the 2018 election, losing to current Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham.
President Donald Trump nominated Pearce as director of the Bureau of Land Management in November 2025. The agency oversees 245 million acres of federal public land mostly in 12 states in the American West, including New Mexico, along with 700 million acres of underground mineral rights.
That means the bureau, a sub-agency of the U.S. Department of the Interior, is tasked with overseeing oil and gas development on public land, a key driver of New Mexico’s economy accounting for about half of the state’s fossil fuel production centered in the Permian Basin.
During Pearce’s Wednesday confirmation hearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee he was questioned about his record as a supporter of the oil and gas industry, and the sale of public land to private industry.
The full U.S. Senate will vote at a date not yet scheduled on Pearce’s confirmation for the job.
In his opening statement, Pearce touted his experience in oil-rich southern New Mexico, but also explained a balance should be reached between mineral development and other uses such as outdoor recreation.
Public land should be used to develop domestic energy and other minerals where possible, Pearce said, to ensure the U.S. was not dependent on adversarial nations.
“We must preserve the natural spaces so all people have access to the spiritual beauty of the outdoors, where hunting and fishing can be passed down from one generation to the next, where critical minerals can be developed, freeing us from dependence on China,” Pearce said.
“The security and economic health of the country, especially the western states, rests squarely on the shoulders of the BLM. We can and must balance the different uses of public lands. Local economies and future generations depend on us doing our job right.”
The committee’s ranking member U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM), who frequently advocated for tighter restrictions on oil and gas and protecting public land from industrial development said Pearce’s nomination posed a “challenge” for the committee
Heinrich said federal law requires the bureau to manage public lands “as public,” and not owned by any one industr or “special interest.” Heinrich pointed to Pearce’s past support of the fossil fuel industry, which the senator said could prove problematic to the conservation of public land.
“Some of these positions that he has taken, he called for the selling off of public lands. That makes it challenging for me to view his potential tenure at the BLM as one of stewardship,” Heinrich said.
During his questioning of Pearce, Heinrich pointed to alleged plans he said of the federal administration under Trump to sell off large swaths of public land to industry for oil and gas and other developments.
The Bureau of Land Management currently holds quarterly lease auctions, offering tracts of public land for rent to oil and gas companies for production. Operators pay royalty rates to the bureau as a percentage of proceeds from oil or gas produced, with the host state receiving half that revenue.
Leases are generally for 10 years or as long as oil and gas is produced.
Heinrich said some sale of “isolated tracts” of federal public land were permissible for various projects such as local affordable housing, but he worried the Trump administration intended to sell the land “more broadly” to industry, rather than lease it, and questioned if Pearce would continue that effort if confirmed.
“There is a concern among New Mexicans that a sale of public lands on a broader scale might be part of the new BLM agenda,” Heinrich said.
Pearce said his time as an elected official in rural New Mexico, both in Congress and the State Legislature, where he represented the state’s 62nd House District in Lea County, gave him an understanding of the different needs of different lands in the rural Southwest.
He said he did not believe the Interior Department planned “large scale” public lands sales, and said he would look to Congress for guidance on future policies and direction.
“From my time in office, I know that I would have understood better than another director of the BLM for this office the sensitivity of his piece of land or that piece of land,” Pearce said. “There is a monumental amount of work to be done.”
