Embattled Midwest Carbon Pipeline Takes Another Permitting Hit

Iowa land owners attend Iowa Utility Board hearing in Fort Dodge in August, 2023, on permitting of Summit Carbon Solutions pipeline project that would require easements on hundreds of private properties. Courtesy of Jessica Mazour

Summit Carbon Solutions hit a major snag this week when the advisory planning commission in Oliver County, North Dakota, recommended a denial of the company’s conditional use permit applications for road access to build two planned injection wells. The full county board, which has approved road access to other injection wells, will have the final say on this approval.

But the negative recommendation comes after an earlier gut punch: the state of North Dakota rejected a permit application in early August for a 320-mile pipeline transporting captured carbon dioxide (CO2) from ethanol plants to an underground North Dakota storage site, the injection wells in Oliver County.

Summit is an Iowa-based company planning a 2,000-mile web of pipelines in five states: Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota. The company needed easements from landowners for all 2,000 miles.

These permitting denials in North Dakota have caught the attention of landowners in the surrounding states because without North Dakota, project opponents say, it is a “pipeline to nowhere.”

Iowa landowners have packed a meeting room in Fort Dodge for several weeks in August for ongoing Iowa Utility Board hearings that will determine whether Summit will get a project permit in Iowa, and, with it, the right to use eminent domain to take land easements from unwilling private landowners.

They have argued that a private company should not be granted eminent domain for a project that will mostly enrich a private company and not provide a benefit for the public, although Summit would argue that sequestering CO2 underground decreases greenhouse gas and improves the environment for all.

“The Iowa Utilities Board needs to stop wasting everyone’s time and halt Summit’s hearing in Iowa now,” Jessica Mazour of the Sierra Club in Iowa, which opposes the carbon pipeline, told The Epoch Times in response to the latest North Dakota news. “Summit Carbon is clearly not a viable project here in Iowa or anywhere along the route. It’s time for Summit to pack its bags. We don’t want their pipeline to nowhere.”

Company Confident

Summit is not going to walk away from its plan, a spokesperson for the company told The Epoch Times. When North Dakota denied the permit for the 320-mile section of pipeline through the state, Summit filed a Petition for Reconsideration.

In it, Summit made some changes to the North Dakota section of the project, including rerouting around Bismarck. The reroute moved the proposed pipeline roughly 10 miles north of Bismarck city limits and avoided game management areas and areas that may present a geo-hazard risk, such as a landslide.

As for the sequestration storage spot, Summit is seeking a conditional-use permit to drill an injection well in Oliver County. These permits allow for the conditional use of agricultural land as an injection site, and set road use conditions such as dust control, maintenance, and signage.

The Oliver County Planning and Zoning Commission passed a recommendation to the County Commission on Aug. 31, to deny the permit until safety concerns are addressed, the spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email statement. Oliver County previously approved three conditional use permits for three similar well sites that Summit drilled in 2022 and the company is confident that the Oliver County Commission will consider the planning and zoning recommendation, consider safety, and will approve conditional use permits.

Even if these wells are not permitted in time, Summit has an agreement with Minnkota Power to use its CO2 storage well, which was permitted by the North Dakota Industrial Commission in 2022. That well is expected to store permanently store CO2 about a mile underground near Center,  North Dakota.

Why Carbon Capture

When you follow the money in the carbon capture world, it leads to taxpayers footing the bill for incentives to companies. The federal government is encouraging such projects through the Carbon Capture and Sequestration tax credit, also called the 45Q. It is a green initiative said to save the planet from climate change, while also moving large sums of money around among companies involved in these projects.

The credit is worth up to $85 per ton of CO2 captured and sequestered. Summit Carbon Solutions—advertised as the largest carbon capture and storage project in the world when it is completed—will have the capacity to capture and permanently store up to 12 million tons of CO2 every year. At $85 a ton, the project will net $1.02 billion in tax incentives from taxpayers. Tax incentives that can be sold for cash to other companies at a discount.

Before a pipeline is built, companies must have easement agreements on the lands where they plan to build. So far, Summit says it has signed agreements with 2,720 “landowner partners.”

In the Midwest, at least three carbon capture pipeline projects are proposed. In addition to the sprawling 2,000-mile Summit project, Wolf Midstream is planning a 280-mile carbon dioxide sequestration pipeline that will pipe liquid carbon dioxide (CO2) from Cedar Rapids to Decatur, Illinois. And Navigator CO2 Ventures has plans for the Heartland Greenway carbon capture, utilization, and storage system—a 1,300-mile pipeline network—to move and permanently store the carbon in secure underground sites in south-central Illinois. According to the company website, the multibillion-dollar project will weave through Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, Nebraska, and South Dakota.