Carbon storage backlog tails EPA
WASHINGTON — A backlog in carbon storage permitting at the Environmental Protection Agency is driving concern that the Biden administration could delay developing projects in Texas and seven other states.
The EPA is reviewing more than 30 underground carbon storage projects, some dating to 2020.
And almost two years after Louisiana filed an application to permit some projects itself, the EPA has yet to publicly signal any progress in reviewing that application.
At a hearing this month Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, questioned Deputy Energy Secretary David Turk on why the EPA had granted permits for just two carbon storage wells.
When Turk responded that carbon capture was “a phenomenal opportunity,” Manchin replied: “Not the way they’re moving.”
The tension comes six months after Congress passed an Inflation Reduction Act that doubled the value of tax credits for carbon capture and storage to $85 per ton — what oil companies said they needed for projects to make economic sense.
The technology is seen as vital to the future of the oil and gas industry along the Gulf Coast, with Exxon Mobil and other companies proposing a series of projects in Texas and Louisiana, including a carbon storage hub under the Gulf of Mexico.
For months the EPA has been taking impatient questions from Republicans and Democrats, including a letter to EPA administrator Michael Regan from Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, asking for a contact at the agency so his staff could receive updates on the state’s application.
“In just the past few years, our state has seen increasing interest from industry in (carbon capture and storage),” he wrote. “A recurring question is if and when Louisiana will receive primacy.”
The EPA declined requests for comment. During the Senate committee hearing, Turk said he would speak to the White House about carbon storage permitting.
“I understand the urgency of what you’re saying,” he said.
Among the projects awaiting approval are Occidental Petroleum’s carbon stor
age project outside Odessa, which is designed to remove 500,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere per year and is scheduled to go into operation by late 2024.
“These projects can’t move forward if they don’t have the means to sequester the carbon,” said Luke Bolar, spokesman for the Clearpath Foundation, a conservative environmental group. “There’s a lot of pent up demand out there.”
Concern around the EPA’s ability to process applications for carbon storage projects in a timely manner has hung over the agency for years.
Capturing carbon dioxide from emissions or the atmosphere and storing it underground is a relatively new concept, and EPA officials are tasked with deciding whether projects can securely store carbon for centuries without leaks into the atmosphere.
“Standing up and staffing a regulatory program of this nature and complexity takes time,” Jessie Stolark, executive director of the Carbon Capture Coalition, which represents carbon storage developers, said in a statement.
In 2021 Congress gave the EPA $75 million to expand its carbon-storage permitting staff and grant state environmental agencies the right to review their own projects, but so far there is little sign of movement.
A report this month from the Energy Futures Initiative, a consulting firm run by former Obama administration Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, said “improved market, permitting, and regulatory policies” are needed to attract investors from the financial sector.
The two carbon storage projects the EPA has approved, to store emissions from ethanol plants in the Midwest, took six years to receive permits, according to a recent op-ed by scientists at the Colorado School of Mines and published in the Colorado Sun.
In the meantime, the Trump administration allowed North Dakota and Wyoming to permit projects themselves.
Now Louisiana, Texas, Arizona and West Virginia are looking for the Biden administration to grant them the same power — though only Louisiana has filed its formal application.
It’s unclear, however, if and when those permissions will be granted, creating frustration among politicians.
Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican, said in the hearing this month that the EPA had told him Louisiana’s application to begin permitting carbon storage projects was “a model” for other states.
“And we still can’t get it,” he said.
“Is there no one over EPA that says ‘Listen, you were supposed to give us a decision a year ago last October? Now we’re past October, not to mention past a year ago October, and we still don’t know when it’s going to happen.”