The North Dakota Industrial Commission, made up of the governor, attorney general and agricultural commissioner, voted 3-0 this year for a $300,000 marketing and education program on carbon dioxide capture and storage for state residents.
Last month, the state released the website, carbonnd.com/, as part of the effort. The education program is not limited to the website; it also involves outreach and meetings with local authorities and the public.
So far, a little more than $46,000 has been spent for 225 hours of work on the effort, according to an invoice the Industrial Commission shared with the Tribune. That averages to around $200 an hour, though rates varied based on who was doing the work.
When contacted for comment, AE2S Senior Consultant Brent Bogar, who is leading the initiative, referred the Tribune to the Industrial Commission.
Industrial Commission Deputy Director Reice Haase said $200 per hour is normal compensation for consultants.
The website went live a few weeks ago and had been promoted in a newsletter from the Western Dakota Energy Association which is offering volunteer service for the project.
Updates were apparent Friday, including acknowledgement of CO2 being hazardous in high concentrations. Haase said all updates came in response to feedback from the project's executive committee and that the site is mostly complete now.
In interviews, two carbon capture researchers from outside of North Dakota told the Tribune that the information from the website presenting carbon storage operations as safe in the state is accurate. One of the two did speak to some potential risks around the relatively-nascent industry which the website does not directly mention. The other argued that when communicating scientific information, simplification is necessary.
But a pipeline safety watchdog group said the website "glosses over" safety issues that are not addressed in existing regulations for CO2 pipelines.
Additionally, a researcher involved in a study on how CO2 may spread in the event of a pipeline rupture noted in comments some unknowns about safety. These are not mentioned on the website, though he was not critical of the content on the state's website.
The Program
The program was added to the Industrial Commission's funding at the recommendation of Gov. Doug Burgum's office during the 2023 legislative session. The education program was legislatively approved. The money comes from the Lignite Research Council, Oil and Gas Research Council, and Renewable Energy Council — advisory boards to the Industrial Commission composed of industry members, trade groups and state officials. Each council contributed $100,000 from its budget.
It is not tied to any specific project, though some involved in the public meetings have ties to ongoing or planned projects themselves, and have separately promoted them. The group has met a few times in the last year.
Capturing, transporting and underground injection of CO2 for enhanced oil recovery has been around for a few decades, including some efforts in North Dakota. More recently, companies like Blue Flint Ethanol and Red Trail Energy have put systems on their ethanol plants for permanent storage.
The technology is, however, poised for a massive expansion in the coming years as the world looks to address climate change through storing the emissions from burning fossil fuels and a number of industrial processes. The prospect for a number of huge new projects in North Dakota has spurred on skeptics and opponents expressing a variety of concerns around property rights, environmental issues and potential safety hazards.
A pipeline rupture in Satartia, Mississippi, in 2020 sent over 40 people to the hospital. Supporters of carbon capture — and the website — point to CO2 pipelines' broader safety record, including a 205-mile pipeline in western North Dakota that has operated for two decades. Some experts have told the Tribune there is still a knowledge gap on transportation safety.
The Politics
For as loud as the two sides have been, polling indicates that much of the state is up for grabs when it comes to opinion on carbon capture efforts.
"These things always break down into four f's. You've got friends, fence sitters, foes and fanatics. And all but the fanatics can be moved one step in your direction. You can turn foes into fence sitters and fence sitters into friends — and you want to keep your friends," the state's former top oil — and carbon storage — regulator Lynn Helms said at a meeting earlier this year prior to his retirement.
Haase said the website is intended to be a neutral source of information on the industry.
A poll by the North Dakota News Cooperative earlier this year found that 40 percent of residents are unsure if carbon capture can mitigate climate change, while 16 percent believe it can and 27 percent do not. Additionally, 43 percent expressed concern about climate change's impact on the future, while 34 percent do not see it as a problem.
Concerns about both climate change and views on carbon capture fell along party lines. The belief that carbon capture would help address climate change was low for believers across parties. In all, 87 percent of Democrats, 45 percent of independents and 26 percent of Republicans described themselves as concerned about the climate. Only 36 percent of Democrats, 16 percent of independents and 8 percent of Republicans believe carbon capture can reduce its effects.
Before the Industrial Commission officially approved funding for the carbon capture education program this spring, about 20 state legislators submitted a letter opposing it. Most have been aligned with the further-right wing faction of the state Republican Party, though they were joined by two Democrats — a slim minority in the Legislature — one was Senate Minority Leader Kathy Hogan, D- Fargo, the other was state Sen. Tim Mathern, D- Fargo. All but six had voted for the Industrial Commission's broader funding.
Environmental groups have mixed perspectives on carbon capture's benefits. Some see it as an expensive and unproven method of actually addressing the problem that CO2 causes — climate change. They point to a history of projects overpromising and underdelivering on emissions reductions and argue cheaper solutions are available.
Climate change is not mentioned on the state's website, even in a pop-up titled "The Science of CO2."
State officials and developers tend to emphasize that the projects are not pursued out of concern for the climate, but rather to secure a future for some of the state's key industries — oil, gas, coal and biofuels, which face a growing list of regulations and other pressures to address their environmental impacts. Captured CO2 can also be used to pump more oil and officials have said it will be needed to keep oil production high past the late 2030s.
Storage
Climate change denial has been a reason driving some opposition to carbon capture based on comments given at public meetings, but most people express concerns and questions around the safety of above- and below-ground CO2 transportation and storage operations.
North Dakota achieved "primacy" in 2018, meaning that the state's regulations meet or exceed the federal Environmental Protection Agency's requirements for protecting groundwater. The Department of Mineral Resources handles the technical aspects of those permits and regulates the industry. The Industrial Commission oversees Mineral Resources.
The website shows a layer of "impermeable cap rock" separating ground water from where CO2 will be stored over a mile down.
Susan Hovorka, a senior research scientist at the Jackson School of Geosciences at The University of Texas at Austin said though the website's description was simplified, it got the right points across.
"'Perfectly suited for permanent and safe storage?' One could quibble with that. It's pretty damn good," she said.
Sean McCoy, an assistant professor in the Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering at the University of Calgary, said he could not directly comment on the information related to the state's geology, but said broadly the storage description appeared on point.
Still, he noted some things that are left out. The risks of leaks of CO2 from underground storage through fault lines do exist, McCoy said, but research tends to show they are small. When CO2 is pumped into saline aquifers there is also the possibility that the salty water can get displaced and travel to groundwater.
Whether carbon storage will work safely depends on the specific geology of a storage location, McCoy said, but the incentive to find the right type of location is high because of how expensive operations are.
"If (storage) starts to show (companies) things that (they) don't anticipate, (they) might well have to stop, and we have seen that ... Did it have environmental impacts? No. Did it have health impacts? No. Did it cause accidents? No. But it did cost them a lot of money," he said.
One reason that the state is confident it can be a good storage location is because of water quality differences between the Broom Creek Formation — where CO2 will be stored — and the Inyan Kara Formation, which show the cap rock is effectively separating the two formations, said Kevin Connors, an official at the Energy and Environmental Research Center, a nonprofit at the University of North Dakota that frequently works with the state government.
Connors worked at Mineral Resources and helped put together the state's regulations which allowed it to gain primacy from the EPA.
Every site is characterized prior to projects being permitted to account for site-specific considerations, he said.
Hovorka said storage regulations are comprehensive and should work to protect those living nearby.
McCoy said the Industrial Commission appearing to promote carbon capture in line with the state's economic goals, while also being tasked with regulating it, could raise some questions.
"I think it's legitimate to ask, 'Are you putting the fox in charge of the henhouse?'" he said.
Taking up the mantle of being an industry's regulator and promoter has been the approach the Industrial Commission uses in regards to the oil and gas industry in North Dakota.
Proponents of the approach say it made investing in North Dakota easier, but critics have argued it has led to unnecessary pollution and safety issues, especially during the oil boom.
Surface
In terms of risks to the public, McCoy said the biggest concerns are from pipelines and at the wellhead where the CO2 is injected. He gave credit to the state for acknowledging the Satartia incident on its website and linking to the federal report.
Still, the website leaves out the fact that the rupture led to an evacuation of over 200 people in the rural town, and more than 40 went to the hospital. No one died.
Some who said that the incident caused them to pass out have reported health effects years later in comments to National Public Radio, a local hospital official also spoke to ongoing issues.
The Industrial Commission does not regulate pipelines, but it does regulate above-ground elements of sequestration wells. Haase, in comments, noted higher levels of impurities in the CO2 transported near Satartia, contrasting it to CO2 sources in North Dakota.
Hydrogen sulfide, a toxic gas, was also present on the Satartia pipeline because of the source — a natural underground CO2 reservoir. But according to the federal incident report, hours after the rupture, a number of buildings still had CO2 concentrations higher than what federal regulations say is a safe level of exposure. Buildings were later ventilated to clear the air, according to the report.
Hovorka said CO2 transportation is relatively safe compared to other potential hazards.
"We handle CO2 everywhere ... no one's afraid to go into the quick market where they have canisters of CO2 for making beverages. No one even thinks about it, right? But it is a hazard. If someone smashed those canisters they could fill up the store and somebody could die. But nobody worries," she said.
Erin Sutherland, the policy and program director at the Pipeline Safety Trust, a Washington state-based watchdog group said, “This website glosses over critical safety issues associated with transporting carbon dioxide via pipeline that should not be ignored, such as the fact that CO2 can be an asphyxiant and intoxicant, and that existing regulations do not address matters that would keep communities safe, such as specialized emergency response needs, setbacks, and CO2-specific plume dispersion modeling.”
The federal government is in the process of crafting new regulations in response to the Satartia incident. California and Illinois have put moratoriums on new CO2 pipelines until the regulations are in place.
Sam Wang, a professor of chemical engineering at Texas A&M, is working on a federally backed model to better estimate how CO2 could spread in the event of a rupture. That would be used for emergency response. CO2's spread is location-specific, so there is no uniform standard.
He said he thinks CO2 pipelines can be safe, but there are still uncertainties about location-based risk.
"(For risk), it's both the consequence and likelihood (of an incident). What I do is more the consequence side ... so consequence I want to say that is medium," he said, later adding, "With limited data, limited miles of pipelines (and) incidents — I think we have several, but it is still limited — for right now at least for me, it's hard to say what is the likelihood."
There are about 5,300 miles of CO2 pipelines operating in the U.S. The CO2 pipeline incident rate is historically smaller than natural gas or oil pipelines, though their footprints are 3 million miles and 230,000 miles, respectively.
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