After months of acrimonious public meetings on oil and gas drilling in Santa Fe County, one county commissioner is trying to broker a consensus among the warring factions in a more intimate setting.

Commissioner Paul Campos has invited representatives from the oil industry and drilling opponents to sit down together today. The topic of the meeting, which is closed to the public, is the new oil and gas ordinance being drafted by the county and how to make it more palatable to both sides.

"I want to see what we agree on and what we disagree on," said Campos. "Once we define what we disagree on, my hope is to bring in technical people to bring us up to the best practices. This is the first step in developing an ordinance that will protect the community, the water and the land. That's our goal."

Drilling opponents have said the new ordinance weakens the protections in an existing county ordinance that governs primarily hard-rock mining. Setbacks from residences and water wells in the new measure are too lenient, according to critics, and are effectively negated by clauses that offer oil drillers the option of obtaining variances.

County staff members and commissioners have said the county must tread lightly into the murky waters of oil drilling regulation lest it risk lawsuits from oil producers.

The guest list for today's meeting includes Oil Conservation Division Director Mark Fesmire and Chris Christensen, vice president of production engineering for Tecton Energy. New Mexico Oil and Gas Association president Bob Gallagher was asked to come but declined, according to county spokesman Stephen Ulibarri.

Tecton sparked the creation of the new ordinance by announcing this year that it has leased thousands of acres of mineral rights in the county. The company already has re-entered one well in the Galisteo Basin in pursuit of the millions of gallons of "light sweet crude" it suspects lay beneath the basin.

Representatives from the state Environment Department and grass roots groups opposed to oil and gas drilling also have been invited to today's meeting.

Betsy Siwula-Brandt, a Galisteo Basin-area resident who worked in the oil industry for 18 years, said she'll use the meeting as an opportunity to ask the county to take more time to craft the new ordinance.

Santa Fe County passed a three-month moratorium on oil and gas drilling permits Nov. 27 to allow itself time to iron out the details of the oil and gas ordinance. But Siwula-Brandt said three months isn't enough time to consider the environmental and economic impacts oil drilling will have on the county.

"No way can we do the studies that need to be done in order to intelligently inform the ordinance," said Siwula-Brandt, who owns three businesses in the Galisteo Basin area. "We are trying to protect our aquifer, and the aquifer hasn't even been defined, its perimeter, its depth."

Siwula-Brandt said she knows state and federal laws won't let the county ban oil drilling. She just wants time to make sure the proper precautions are taken to lessen the impact on the area as much as possible.

Other anti-drilling activists are hoping to drive the industry away for good.

Forest Guardians director John Horning said his group will use its seat at the meeting to "indicate to Tecton that we are going to make life miserable for them at every turn, and they should consider that before they keep investing money and time in Santa Fe."

Santa Fe's city councilors also are getting in on the discussion. At Wednesday night's meeting, they approved a resolution supporting the temporary moratorium, noting oil and gas drilling may endanger the health, safety, general welfare and quality of life of county residents, including those who live within city limits. The measure also supports a delay in action on Tecton's proposal to make time for study and evaluation.

Councilor Patti Bushee introduced a resolution calling for the council's outright opposition to oil and gas exploration in the county and ordering the city attorney to establish the city's legal standing on the issue. That measure now will move through the city's committee process.

New Mexican reporter Julie Ann Grimm contributed to this article.

Contact Phaedra Haywood at 986-3068 or phaywood@sfnewmexican.com.