In February 2020, a buried pipeline carrying liquefied carbon dioxide ruptured near the small village of Satartia, Mississippi, releasing a “foul smell and green fog across the highway,” according to the first person to report the leak to 911.
Emergency personnel soon evacuated about 200 residents from the village and the surrounding area, where crews eventually discovered nearly 22,000 barrels of CO2 had dispersed from the pipeline.
The rupture led to mass poisoning, with some residents lying on the ground, shaking and unable to breathe. Forty-five people sought medical attention.
Now, officials in Benton County, Indiana, worry the same fate could await them.
BP, the multinational oil and gas company, has started investigating the potential of transporting and storing CO2 deep underground beneath portions of the 250,000 acres of farmland there.
The company last year hired a team to start seismic testing, sending shock waves into the ground to determine the potential for the project in the sparsely populated county in northwest Indiana.
The prospect worries Benton County Commissioner Bryan Berry.
“What if that pipeline bursts?” he said. “That’s happened before down in Mississippi. Nobody died, but who says that somebody won’t die if it happens here?”
NOT A PIPE DREAM
The possibility of CO2 pipelines coming to Indiana is heightened after the U.S. Department of Energy this month awarded up to $1 billion in grant funding to launch a Midwest Hydrogen Hub.
Some funding will go toward the production of what’s known as “blue” hydrogen at or near BP’s oil refinery in Whiting, along along Lake Michigan.
Blue hydrogen is made by converting natural gas into carbon dioxide and hydrogen. The hydrogen is free of greenhouse gases and is clean fuel used in energy-intensive industries such as steel-making, power generation, cement production, aviation and long-haul transportation.
The climate-changing carbon byproduct, on the other hand, is captured, turned into a liquid and injected thousands of feet underground to be permanently stored in saline reservoirs or depleted oil, gas and coal reservoirs.
Some of the largest saline reservoirs in the country are below Benton County, about 100 miles away from the site of the proposed BP blue hydrogen facility. If built, the project would likely seek to transport carbon there.
Environmental groups are sounding the alarm, arguing that such pipelines are woefully under-regulated and could lead to more incidents like the one in Mississippi.
For a county commissioner like Berry, that concern is multiplied by new state legislation that almost entirely bars local officials from weighing in on carbon sequestration projects happening in their backyard.
“Our legislators pretty much cut us off at the knees,” he said. “If the landowners sign up for these projects, there’s nothing we can do to stop it.”
A CARBON HOTSPOT
Just under 5,400 miles of pipelines carry CO2 in the U.S. Most of those pipelines are used in western states to link natural CO2 sources to oil fields for enhanced oil recovery, according to the Congressional Research Service.
With billions of federal dollars and tax breaks from last year’s climate legislation flowing into the expansion of carbon sequestration projects, that number could soon double.
Developers are seeking permits for thousands of miles of new CO2 pipelines. In the upper Midwest alone, just over 3,600 miles is proposed for carbon capture from ethanol plants, according to the research service.
By 2050, the nation will likely need nearly 67,000 miles of CO2 pipelines to meet demand for carbon sequestration, according to a study by Princeton University.
Large stretches of those pipelines will likely transport carbon to Indiana.
The state has vast underground salt-saturated geological reserves that have the potential to store from 38 to 129 billion metric tons of CO2, according to the most recent (2015) estimates from the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory.
That equals hundreds of trillions of pounds of carbon dioxide.
Other states like Illinois and Michigan also have large underground storage capacities. But Indiana has greater need for storage. It ranks third in the nation for greenhouse gas emissions from stationary sources, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
That means Indiana is likely to be home to a good portion of underground CO2 storage required by the upcoming Midwest Hydrogen Hub, explained Ashley Douds, a research geologist at the Indiana Geological and Water Survey. She is studying the feasibility of capturing and storing CO2 in Indiana’s rock formations.
“Although no details have been released regarding the Midwest Hydrogen Hub’s plans for carbon storage, it does make sense for the CO2 to be stored in close proximity to where it is generated,” Douds said in an email.
'NOT PREPARED’
When a CO2 pipeline ruptures, the toxic asphyxiant can travel large distances at lethal concentrations. It sucks the oxygen out of the air, making it impossible to start cars or emergency vehicles. That’s what happened during the line break in Mississippi.
The disaster should have triggered more CO2 pipeline oversight from federal regulators, argued Bill Caram, executive director of the Pipeline Safety Trust, a nonprofit public charity promoting pipeline safety.
But more than three years later, no federal regulations have been established for pipes transporting CO2 as a liquid or gas. Rules only exist if the carbon is moving as a supercritical fluid.
“That disaster into Satartia, Mississippi, really laid out the warts of the regulatory system and these unique safety risks of CO2,” Caram said. “We are certainly worried about something like that happening again.”
Federal regulating agencies are reviewing and drafting new policies for CO2 pipelines, nearly all of which are required to have a permit from the EPA. But when those new rules might be approved is a question looming over an industry on the cusp of a massive expansion because of the new federal incentives.
The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), which has statutory authority over CO2 pipeline safety, said it plans to issue a notice of proposed rulemaking in June 2024, but no date has been set for a final rule.
In the meantime, companies are quickly moving forward with plans to build new CO2 pipelines with little to no federal oversight, Caram explained.
Equally concerning, he noted, is Congress’ limitation of some regulating agencies’ ability to apply new rules and policies to already existing pipelines, meaning those built now wouldn’t have to comply with upcoming regulations.
“The current regulations certainly would not lead an operator to build a safe pipeline,” Caram said. “They really leave a lot up to the operator’s discretion on how they choose to safely operate their pipeline.”
For Indiana Sen. Jean Breaux, a Democrat representing portions of Indianapolis, those concerns, coupled with questions about how much clean hydrogen will actually help curb climate change, are enough to oppose CO2 projects in the state.
“I just think we don’t know enough about it and it’s still an unproven technology,” she said. “To the extent that we need to be getting behind this as a state, I just don’t think we’re prepared. There’s not enough data to show us what the long-term consequences of this kind of practice might be.”
‘PEOPLE ARE CONCERNED’
To be clear, no permits have been issued in Indiana allowing the construction of a CO2 pipeline. In fact, nearly every carbon-sequestration proposal has received fierce pushback from local residents.
In Vigo and Vermillion counties, a proposal by Wabash Valley Resources to capture and store carbon from an ethanol plant has met constant opposition during heated public meetings. The company wants to build an 11-mile pipeline from the plant to two underground wells.
In Benton County, meetings hosted by BP to discuss carbon sequestration and storage have become so fiery that the police were called to control the crowd, according to Berry, the county commissioner.
BP did not respond to emails seeking comment for this story.
One reason for the stiff opposition is the lack of regulations on pipelines, which makes residents question the safety of the projects, Caram argued. He said companies know this, and many are pushing federal agencies to quickly adopt new rules to boost public confidence.
“I’ve actually heard a lot from the industry that they want these pipelines to be regulated,” Caram said. “They don’t want them to just be the wild west.”
Berry said the situation in Benton County isn’t helped by House Enrolled Act 1209. Approved last year, the new law stops local officials from passing stricter regulations on carbon sequestration projects.
The bill did implement important protections for landowners by giving them rights to the geological formations below their property. Companies are now required to compensate landowners with property above the underground CO2 storage area.
What draws ire from some is the fact the bill allows the state to force landowners to join a carbon sequestration project if 70% of property owners in a project area sign land agreements with a company.
Andy Tauer, executive director of public policy at Indiana Farm Bureau, which helped draft the bill, said the the policy seeks to avoid situations in which one or two property owners hold up a major sequestration project.
“I hear the concern of those landowners that might be in that 30%,” he said. “But I can assure you our team and our members worked very hard to get it as far as we could as part of the negotiation on that legislation.”
That’s of little comfort to Berry.
He said with BP already knocking on doors in Benton County to get property owners signed up for a project, more regulations are needed now to protect residents from what many see as an untested and potentially dangerous technology that could have long-term consequences in the community.
“People are concerned about the pipeline breaking,” he said. “They’re really concerned about the water getting contaminated. And they’re very concerned about what happens in 20 years or 50 years once this carbon is pumped into the ground.”