Proposal could delay pipeline ruling
Groups want Summit to merge permit requests
Some groups want Iowa regulators to force Summit Carbon Solutions to consolidate its requests to build an $8.5 billion carbon capture pipeline across the state, a move that could delay a ruling on a permit for the controversial project.
The Ames company proposes to capture carbon dioxide emissions from ethanol plants, liquefy them under pressure and transport them via the pipeline to North Dakota to be sequestered deep underground. The Iowa Utilities Board is believed to be nearing a decision on Summit’s 2001 request for a permit to build a 690-mile segment of the multistate pipeline across 29 Iowa counties, serving 12 ethanol plants.
But earlier this month, Summit filed 14 permit requests to add 340 miles of pipeline that would connect to 17 POET and Valero ethanol plants. The companies, the nation’s largest ethanol producers, joined the Summit project after another company, Navigator CO2 Ventures, killed its proposed $3.5 billion carbon capture pipeline late last year, citing regulatory barriers.
Summit said the expansion would require pipeline construction in 23 more Iowa counties. That’s on top of a Summit permit request in June to build a 31-mile lateral pipeline in Mitchell and Floyd counties, serving another ethanol plant.
The Sierra Club’s Iowa Chapter and the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation have filed motions asking the board to “reopen the record” on Summit’s pipeline proposal. The record was closed after an eight-week hearing last fall. Seven counties and landowners who oppose the project joined the motions.
“These new trunk lines are clearly part of the same project,” wrote Tim Whipple, a Des Moines attorney who represents counties that are in a legal battle with Summit over setback requirements for the pipelines that are stricter than the state’s.
Whipple also wrote that the legal issues being considered in Summit’s original permit request are the same as those in the new requests.
Summit has to prove the pipeline will promote “public convenience and necessity,” which generally means that the project’s benefits outweigh
potential liabilities. And the board will consider whether Summit should be granted eminent domain powers, enabling it to force unwilling property owners to sell it access to their land.
“This is not a situation where a pipeline is already constructed and years later a single lateral pipeline is proposed,” wrote Wally Taylor, representing the Sierra Club. “This is a situation where the original pipeline project has not even been permitted yet, and the 14 additional lines make this an entirely new and different project.”
If the pipeline permit requests aren’t consolidated, Taylor asked that the board stay action on the 14 additional permit requests until the original permit is decided.
Taylor said March 15 that the motions might delay a decision in Summit’s original case. But they also could expedite consideration of the entire project.
This week, Summit filed a motion asking regulators to reject the groups’ requests, saying they’re “without merit and would result in nothing more than delay.”
Summit said the board denied a similar request last year, and many of the same reasons apply. Among them: The board found that consolidation would not “expedite or simplify consideration” of the issues involved. In fact, it said, the board found “the opposite to be true in this situation.”
Summit wrote that its permit request has “taken 31 months to get to this point” and would likely “take a similar time frame to develop” by consolidating pipeline permit requests.
“The only remaining step in this docket is for the board to issue its decision,” the company wrote.
In a related decision, the utilities board March 14 issued a letter denying Summit’s proposed dates to hold public meetings in the counties where the new pipeline route would run. In a 2-to-1 decision, board members Joshua Byrnes and Sarah Martz wrote that Summit shouldn’t consider dates before June. Board chair Erik Helland agreed with Summit’s proposed April and May dates.
Altogether, Summit proposes building a 2,500-mile pipeline that connects to 57 ethanol plants in Minnesota, Nebraska, South Dakota and North Dakota, as well as in Iowa.
The projects have been controversial across the region. Critics have voiced concerns about pipeline safety and the project’s impact on farmland and drainage tiles underlying fields and have objected to granting Summit eminent domain.