‘How are you going to stop that?’ Inside the rush for carbon capture in rural Louisiana

Keith Payne bought the perfect home for an avid hunter more than two decades ago, located in an isolated spot in the piney woods in this corner of Louisiana.

But the retired state highway supervisor began receiving calls about a year ago from a company prospecting for sites to store millions of tons of carbon dioxide permanently underground. They wanted a deal to access thousands of feet underneath his small spread in northeastern St. Helena Parish.

“What am I going to do, you know? Because I called (my neighbors) before I signed,” said the 63-year-old, whose house is surrounded by land owned by timber company Soterra.

“Everybody’s answer the same as mine: ‘Well, it’s going to be on Soterra property. How are you going to stop that?’”

The dilemma was a window on the emerging carbon capture and sequestration technology that Louisiana has embraced, opening the possibility of a major new industry while also addressing climate change. Companies have been looking throughout the cane fields and woods of rural Louisiana for storage sites, leaving residents with uncertainty and uneasy choices.

Payne said he knew Soterra had already cut a deal with Denbury Carbon Solutions for nearly 8,500 acres surrounding him, so he signed an agreement for a small upfront payment because he figured the project was coming whether he wanted it or not.

Denbury, owned by ExxonMobil, is one of three oil majors quietly looking at sites in St. Helena and northern Livingston parishes without the high-profile controversy that greeted Air Products’ plans to store CO2 under Lake Maurepas a couple years ago.

The other two are Shell and an Occidental Petroleum Corp. subsidiary, 1PointFive, according to the state Department of Energy and Natural Resources and company statements.

Carbon capture and sequestration, or CCS, compresses carbon dioxide nearly into a liquid and injects it thousands of feet down into formations that experts say can hold it permanently, keeping those heat-trapping emissions out of the atmosphere.

Advocates and industry officials point out that companies have been pumping CO2 underground for decades to push up oil from depleted fields. They say they know how to do it safely.

“We are confident in our ability to permanently sequester CO2 and adhere to the stringent regulations designed to prevent any leaks or impacts to drinking water,” said Margot Armentor, an ExxonMobil spokeswoman.

Soterra didn’t respond to a request for comment.

‘What is the future for that?’

One issue that concerns residents is the potential for underground leaks, particularly into shallower aquifers, where water can turn carbon dioxide into corrosive carbonic acid. For the northern Florida Parishes proposals, carbon would be stored thousands of feet under the region’s primary drinking water source, the Southern Hills Aquifer.

Industry officials say leaks are highly unlikely, especially those that could reach shallow aquifers, but some residents are skeptical.

Deb and Tim Leonard moved to Pine Grove in southern St. Helena Parish about 13 years ago and are about a mile from one of two Shell test wells also on Soterra land, records show.

Deb Leonard, 59, doesn’t trust that companies and state government can know what will happen in the decades ahead. She worries that future water well problems could affect their home’s long-term value.

“What is the future for that? Not just for my generation but for generations to come,” Leonard asked.

Shell officials said they have a methodical process to look for safe sites to store CO2 and haven’t decided on St. Helena.

“The project will only move forward if we — and regulators — are convinced that the area is suitable for safe, permanent carbon storage, and pending a final investment decision by Shell,” spokeswoman Natalie Gunnell said.

Enticed by lucrative federal tax credits and facing pressure to lower their carbon footprint, oil, gas and petrochemical companies have been rushing to lock up storage sites.

Louisiana is primed for CCS. It has long expertise in oil and gas drilling, high demand from its industrial base, pipeline networks and suitable geology.

Susan Hovorka, a University of Texas at Austin professor who has spent 25 years working on Gulf Coast CCS, said Louisiana’s impermeable shale and porous sandstone can keep carbon dioxide sealed far underneath aquifers.

“In Louisiana, what you’ve got is almost all good,” she said.

Companies behind the three projects in the Florida Parishes have put or plan to put test wells on thousands of acres owned by timber companies, according to records and company statements.

‘What went wrong’

For Denbury, its St. Helena site not only offers the capacity to store 110 million tons of carbon dioxide, but also is near its CO2 line. The Green Line runs south near the Mississippi River industrial corridor, an area with high demand for CCS storage.

Industry officials and experts add that tax credits expanded under the Biden administration — known as “45Q” — have unlocked momentum, with the hope that the economics will improve before the credit program and its 12-year tax credits end. The program won’t offer credits for projects started after Dec. 31, 2032. 

“There is no economics in this other than 45Q,” said Tracy Evans, chief executive officer of CapturePoint.

CapturePoint is planning the $750 million Cenla Hub sequestration pipeline and storage facility in rural Vernon and Rapides parishes.

The proposed line will run northwest, serving Haynesville Shale gas processing plants and a $1.2 billion methanol plant and direct air capture plants proposed in the Shreveport area. Eight-five percent of the more than 20,000-acre storage area is held by three timber companies and can contain more than 2 billion tons of CO2, Evans said.

But environmental groups question if CCS is ready for large-scale use.

In mid-September, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ordered agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland, owner of a model sequestration project in Decatur, Illinois, to remediate underground leaks.

Carbon dioxide escaped upward into an unauthorized layer 5,000 feet deep, but didn’t reach shallower drinking water aquifers, the EPA says.

Pam Richart, who leads the Eco-Justice Collaborative in Champagne, Illinois, said regulators are considering more than a dozen other Illinois wells when they should be slowing things down.

“It’s happening, I think, without a real hard look at what went wrong and what we need to do,” she said.

On Nov. 1, the EPA received modeling from ADM about the extent of the leak and is reviewing it, an agency spokeswoman said.

‘Highly improbable’

Given authority by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to regulate the industry, Louisiana’s DENR and its Office of Conservation have not yet authorized any carbon injection, though test wells are being allowed.

Louisiana officials say they are focused on ensuring CO2 injection is well away from aquifers and separated from them by “sufficient confining layers.”

Patrick Courreges, DENR spokesman, said the state’s underground injection program aims to “minimize the chances for leaks and maximize the ability to take corrective action if necessary.”

The leaking well in Illinois had an impermeable layer around 500 feet thick and no major faults or fractures, according to an EPA filing. A corroded monitoring well drilled through that layer leaked after exposure to CO2 and brine, the EPA says.

The well had a metal casing made of a corrosion-resistant alloy that includes chrome, the EPA says. In a monitoring plan submitted last year, ADM told the EPA a leak from the monitoring well would be “highly improbable.”

Courreges said Louisiana is examining what happened in Illinois and is aware that the EPA is discussing more corrosion-resistant well casings.

It’s not clear to what degree injected CO2 will end up beneath homes, farms and woods in St. Helena and northern Livingston. State officials say the area can vary from a mile to several square miles, but actual distances are not yet public under EPA confidentiality rules.

They won’t be until a later public comment period, Courreges said.

Denbury offered a sense of the sweep of its plans in St. Helena land records. Though Denbury is seeking state permission just to test geology, the company reached nearly 60 underground injection deals by early October with landowners like Payne.

No residents interviewed near the Shell and Occidental wells said they had signed injection deals. Records searches didn’t turn up any either. Under state law, landowners own the minute spaces in deep sedimentary rock where CO2 is injected.

Carla Arnold, 49, remembers seeing the trucks and hearing the operations in the woods east of her house off La. 442, where Occidental’s test well was drilled north of Holden.

She suspected the activity might be similar to what happened in Lake Maurepas, but had “no idea” until she spoke to a reporter last month.

“I would just like to be informed,” she said.

Occidental officials say they are committed to transparency and have had community meetings about their carbon sequestration hub planned for 30,000 acres of Weyerhaeuser timber land. Weyerhaeuser did not respond to a request for comment.

“Our goal is to be a good long-term partner in Livingston Parish,” William Fitzgerald, an Occidental spokesman, said.

Darlene Hoover, 64, whose family has the 80-acre McMorris cattle ranch along La. 422, has been to the meetings but said she doesn’t have the full picture.

Hoover said she might be fine with CO2 storage as long as her family land is tested, but didn’t like the impression that the project was “a done deal.”

“They kept it hush-hush. They were already starting on this when we heard about it,” she said.

Occidental’s underground storage would have 1,000 feet of impermeable shale capping it and start more than 2,000 feet below the lowest drinking water aquifer, the company says.

Cody McCalmon, 33, remembers being curious about what was happening in the woods north of his Holden-area home and figuring it had to do with CO2. But he and his wife, Chasity, 32, who are raising five young boys, said they weren’t sure what to make of it.

“I don’t think they’re going to do something that’s going to kill us, but, I guess, you know, a harmful gas going down around us. … It’s eye-opening,” Cody said.