This story was initially revealed by DeSmog and is reprinted right here with permission.

Whereas two dozen carbon seize tasks are proposed in Louisiana, determining precisely the place firms plan to inject carbon dioxide underground for storage is a little bit of a thriller. That’s as a result of a state regulation handed in 2021 regulating carbon seize features a provision permitting firms to assert a variety of challenge data — together with location — as commerce secrets and techniques. 

The state regulation mirrors a federal provision that additionally permits firms to categorise the placement of their injection web site as “proprietary enterprise data” (PBI), which signifies that, in response to the U.S. Environmental Safety Company (EPA), probably the most the company can say with out violating PBI standing is the parish or county the place carbon dioxide can be injected into deep geological formations.

Because of this, folks involved about these tasks are unable to guage their potential for hurt till the time-limited public commenting interval, which no challenge in Louisiana has reached but. Take for instance, the case of David Levy, who served on Louisiana’s Oilfield Website Restoration Fee and was involved a couple of potential battle of curiosity with a carbon seize and storage (CCS) challenge proposed by ExxonMobil.

Levy has been making an attempt to determine why the Division of Power and Pure Sources (DENR) spent greater than $900,000 plugging and cleansing up an orphaned wastewater nicely web site on ExxonMobil’s property in Vermilion Parish, about 40 miles southwest of Lafayette, earlier than extra polluting and harmful orphaned nicely websites. He suspected that Exxon requested the state to wash up the nicely web site in preparation for a carbon seize challenge within the parish. However Levy was uncertain of the precise location the place the challenge’s Class VI injection nicely — used for long-term storage of carbon dioxide deep underground — could be drilled.

DeSmog filed a public data request for communications between DENR decision-makers and ExxonMobil employees to seek out clues as to why the state prioritized the saltwater disposal nicely, referred to as Freshwater Metropolis, and if it had something to do with Exxon’s future plans to retailer carbon within the parish. The interior emails DeSmog obtained in response didn’t show ExxonMobil directed the state to wash up a nicely deserted by a smaller, bankrupt oil firm on its property. However the data did present places Exxon thought of for his or her carbon seize challenge: on state lands, beneath White Lake Wetlands Conservation Space and Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge. 

As DeSmog tracked down the placement of Exxon’s carbon injection web site, the challenge modified places and was later placed on maintain. Nonetheless, the proposed challenge raises crimson flags in regards to the lack of transparency surrounding CCS allowing within the state, even when tasks are proposed for state lands.

Levy was chosen to sit down on Louisiana’s Oilfield Website Restoration Fee in 2021 due to his data of the oil and fuel trade. He owns an organization referred to as Petrotechnologies, which designs specialty instruments for wells. However he finally resigned from the fee in December 2022 after coming to consider that the state was deciding on orphaned nicely websites for restoration utilizing state funds based mostly on political favors for well-connected landowners. Emails uncovered by DeSmog’s public file request left Levy with much more questions.

“I don’t know why they wish to do that on state lands. It is unnecessary both,” he stated. “If that place being cleaned up will get tied to CCS in any method, then it was only a reward to Exxon.”

Freshwater Metropolis, the saltwater disposal nicely plugged by the state, was orphaned in 2015 when its final proprietor and operator Black Elk Power went bankrupt. When Hurricane Laura swept by Louisiana in 2020, the storm made a large number of the nicely web site, displacing huge storage tanks and scattering pilings.

Levy says it doesn’t make sense that the state prioritized such a expensive web site restoration when the nicely didn’t look like as a lot of a public well being or local weather risk as orphaned nicely websites actively leaking methane. “They spent a really small quantity plugging that nicely,” Levy stated. “All of the work was to get the tanks inside Exxon’s property. In order that was the price. Not the nicely, which makes it much more weird.”

In July 2021, the state sought reimbursement from the Federal Emergency Administration Company (FEMA) for disposing of the tanks and plugging the nicely within the wake of Hurricane Laura. In the end, FEMA didn’t comply with reimburse the state for cleansing up the positioning.

Nonetheless, the state paid an organization named Gulf Inland Contractors to wash up the positioning, which the agency accomplished in April 2022. Earlier than Black Elk, Freshwater Metropolis had 4 earlier homeowners. Louisiana collects charges on oil and fuel manufacturing to fund its program of plugging wells left behind by oil and fuel firms that go stomach up. The state has the authority to sue earlier homeowners of orphaned wells to recoup the price of plugging and abandoning them when the prices exceed $250,000. 

But, within the case of Freshwater Metropolis, the state failed to take action, regardless of the invoice draining practically $1 million from the orphaned nicely fund, which generally pulls in simply $15 million to $16 million a yr.

Storing Carbon on State Land

Lower than two weeks after the nicely was plugged, ExxonMobil’s Joe Coletti confirmed by way of electronic mail that the corporate had obtained a signed Non-Disclosure Settlement (NDA) from DENR’s lawyer, Blake Canfield, relating to a carbon seize challenge that ExxonMobil may construct about 10 miles away from the orphaned wastewater web site. The oil big wished to take CO2 captured from the most important polluter of greenhouse gases within the state — the CF Industries ammonia manufacturing facility in Donaldsonville, Louisiana — and transport it by way of pipeline to be saved in state-owned lands in Vermilion Parish. 

DENR’s spokesman Patrick Courreges stated it’s not uncommon for the company’s lawyer to signal an NDA with an organization when it pertains to representing the state’s mineral rights as a landowner. “It may be a safety personal firms ask for to make sure their negotiation positions aren’t shared with potential opponents,” he stated.

Whereas the corporate has been hush-hush about the place the carbon could be injected, an electronic mail from Colleti to DENR employees on Might 9, 2022 included a draft working settlement to retailer CO2 in deep geological formations beneath White Lake Wetlands Conservation Space and Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge. Exxon proposed that the corporate would pay $75 per acre to the state for the primary two years and $50 per acre after that to inject CO2. The challenge may inject as much as 10 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per yr into the state-owned lands. Louisiana’s Mineral and Power Board voted to maneuver ahead with negotiations with the corporate on Might 11, 2022.

However when DeSmog just lately requested DENR in regards to the challenge, the state stated the proposed location had modified. To the place, the state couldn’t say. 

“That one will get a bit difficult — our Injection and Mining people have a Class VI software from ExxonMobil in so that they know the proposed web site location, however we are able to’t put it on the market but as a result of the state regulation that enabled our guidelines additionally included the supply which means we now have to abide by the federal definitions of commerce secrets and techniques/enterprise confidentiality on these,” Courreges wrote in an electronic mail. However the location of Class V wells, that are getting used to check injection pressures for CO2 storage, will not be thought of commerce secrets and techniques, nor are the places of proposed oil and fuel wells.

The EPA’s Area 6 Press Officer, Joe Robledo, confirmed that the EPA — which regulates the storage of carbon dioxide in each state however Louisiana, North Dakota, and Wyoming — doesn’t launch the precise location of Class VI wells earlier than the general public commenting interval both. “The very best degree of web site decision we are able to present with out violating [proprietary business information] standing is on the Parish degree,” Robledo wrote in an electronic mail. “Presently, we’re unable to launch extra location particulars.”

After DeSmog despatched inquiries to DENR in regards to the location of Exxon’s Class VI and Class V wells, the company revealed a map of Class V nicely challenge places in Louisiana. These approximate nicely places are close to the place firms plan to inject CO2, as firms will wish to take a look at close to the ultimate challenge location.

The state by no means notified close by landowners or the general public that Exxon was occupied with injecting carbon on state-owned land. Why the corporate would wish to pay to construct the CCS challenge on public land when it owns 125,000 acres within the parish is unclear. One clarification may very well be that it has to do with Exxon limiting their legal responsibility, stated Jane Patton, the U.S. Fossil Economic system Marketing campaign Supervisor for the Middle for Worldwide Environmental Legislation. 

“It’s actually troubling to me that Exxon, a really giant landowner in Louisiana, is making an attempt to make use of state-owned, protected lands for the injection of CO2,” Patton stated. “The general public wasn’t the one who profited off the emissions of the CO2 to start with. So then to attempt to put the damaging collected air pollution in public land after you’ve made an terrible lot of cash on it, that simply looks like foisting the entire unhealthy and not one of the good on the general public.”

Colleti, who directs Exxon’s Gulf Coast carbon seize ventures, didn’t reply to questions on why the corporate wished to inject CO2 into public land, when it owns land close by. Since Might 2022, the corporate has not taken any additional steps to finalize an settlement with the state for pore house below White Lake Wetlands Conservation Space and Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge. On March 1, Exxon clawed again allow functions for 2 Class V take a look at wells in Vermilion Parish, telling regulators that the corporate was reviewing its portfolio after buying Denbury, a CCS agency specializing in enhanced oil restoration, final November.

Vermilion Parish isn’t any stranger to grease and fuel exercise. There are greater than 130 nicely bore holes inside 5 miles of the place Exxon deliberate to drill its two take a look at wells within the parish, stated Scott Eustis, Wholesome Gulf’s Group Science Director. Every of these holes into the earth may have develop into avenues for CO2 to flee the geological formation the place Exxon wished to lure the CO2 underground, he stated. 

With out details about the place CO2 injection wells can be positioned, Eustis stated it’s not potential to inform native landowners of the potential dangers to their consuming water or assess if there are pathways for leaks, akin to underground faults. In areas with underground salt domes, like Vermilion Parish, CO2 leakage and strain can prolong as much as 12 miles away from the injection web site, in response to analysis by the College of Texas at Austin. A new report commissioned by the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Mission warns of the dangers of proposing carbon disposal wells in areas dense with deserted oil and fuel wells.

“Class VI candidates can not hold the places of the underground plume secret, and now have a remark interval,” Eustis stated. He questioned how his group may warn the general public in regards to the potential security hazards of air pollution in such a short while body. Most tasks within the state solely require a 30-day commenting interval. “The dangers prolong removed from the injection web site, and might have an effect on a whole bunch to 1000’s of landowners, though we hope that can be unlikely,” he stated.

Sara Sneath is an investigative local weather reporter based mostly in New Orleans. This story was republished in partnership with DeSmog, a worldwide information outlet working to reveal company misinformation from main fossil gas pursuits.

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