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Hello, and welcome to Louisiana Spotlight.

I'm Karen Leblanc, your host for tonight's show.

Louisiana stands at the forefront of a national energy transition.

As communities navigate the promise or peril of carbon capture technology.

Tonight we examine the controversial carbon capture initiatives spreading across the state.

Exploring the complex interplay between industrial interest, environmental justice and climate policy.

Louisiana has emerged as a focal point for carbon capture and sequestration projects, with dozens of permits filed for state wells to store carbon dioxide deep beneath the Earth's surface.

But beyond the technical aspects, this story raises fundamental questions about the future of energy in our state, the balance between economic development and environmental protection, and the rights of local communities to determine what happens beneath their feet.

Tonight, we'll hear from voices representing multiple perspectives on this issue.

But first, let's hear from Gulf Coast Sequestration in Lake Charles and its owner, Gray Stream, who will help us better understand the science behind CCS and why Louisiana is becoming ground zero for this emerging technology.

My name is Gray Stream.

I am president of Matilda Stream Management, which is a management company that takes care of our lands and businesses here in southwest Louisiana.

I'm also the founder and chairman of Gulf Coast Sequestration.

CCS, or CCUS, stands for Carbon Capture the U is for utilization and assets for sequestration or storage.

My highly technical people don't like the term storage because we're not really.

You know, storage implies you put something in.

You can take it out.

When you sequester CO2, you're putting it down in a formation, like in our case, a deep brine formation in the Frio sand, where it actually absorbs into that formation through dissolution and over a long period of time, mineralization.

The capture side tends to be part of a manufacturing process.

You put a unit on a plant.

It captures either a pure CO2 stream or a stream from which it separates a pure CO2 stream, puts it in a pipe, sends it to us at an injection well, and similar to how CO2 or other materials have always been injected.

You have a wellhead you injected down into a deep formation with a cap rock layer on top of it.

So in our case, a very thick and black shale layer and permanently store it in a sand that has high permeability.

So you can take the injection and porosity.

So it has a lot of storage capacity where we're injecting is the reos.

And right.

So where we are it's about 8 to 10,000ft.

You will know where it is because you have monitoring wells and where you're injecting and monitoring walls around it.

And as it's injected, it will, move out from the injection spot as it's absorbed into that formation.

In terms of folks saying that, you know, it will travel through all the, well, bores speaking for our projects, we have actually designed our, our sites so that we don't have any oil wells.

But I actually, you know, believe that good projects can happen in places that have, you know, historical wells.

There's just a very rigorous protocol for making sure that that DNR is satisfied, you know, that they won't, you know, present a pathway.

And there's a, you know, there's a tax credit involved.

So they, the monitoring of it and the assurance of it as being, you know, permanent in order to get the credit is an important component.

The land that we'll see today is pasture.

It is an active cattle ranching operation and part of a ranching operation that has been in our family that we still operate today.

And there won't be any drastic change to the land once we're underway.

You know, interestingly, over the years, there has been a lot of oil and gas activity that has occurred in concert with grazing and agriculture out there where our projects are.

So this will be very similar.

My hope for GCS is that as these solutions exist, we have a competitive advantage.

I mean, we're we have an ability to put low carbon intensity products out into the global marketplace.

So I think GCS has an opportunity to be an important part of that.

For me, you know, the economy of the region is important.

I want us to, you know, have a healthy base of our economy and create jobs.

And I'm proud of that our company is based here.

To help us better understand the economics and science of carbon capture and sequestration.

We are joined now by Doctor Greg Upton.

He is the executive director at Louisiana State University's Center for Energy Studies.

Thank you so much for joining us here today to talk about this very important subject.

So carbon capture sequestration sounds very technical.

Let's break it down for viewers to understand at its very basic essence, what is it in layman's terms?

Yeah, sure.

So carbon capture and sequestration really starts with the first word, which is capture.

And so here in Louisiana we have large industrial sources of emissions.

We produce products like liquid fuels, chemicals, plastics and fertilizers.

And we export those products all over the world.

But as a result of the production of those products, there's there's significant amounts of carbon dioxide emissions.

And so the first step is in that industrial facility to install equipment that's going to capture that carbon dioxide.

The second step is the transportation of it.

And so that involves a pipeline where you put the carbon dioxide into a pipeline.

And then that transports it to the location that eventually you would like to secure the carbon.

And for that, it looks very similar to oil and gas extraction that we've done in Louisiana for over a century.

But instead of drilling the well looking for hydrogen carbons that you'll pull out of the ground, instead, what you're looking for is formations that have space, if you will, that you can put the carbon dioxide into such that it's permanently sequestered underground.

So that goes from capture to transportation to sequestration.

You served on the state carbon capture task force.

What was the determination?

What was the takeaway that came out of that task force?

Yeah.

So I thought that was a really productive exercise.

And by the way, the final report is still going to be coming out soon here.

But really what we did is we we spent a lot of time listening to stakeholders.

It was a lot of listening.

We listened to the landowners and the citizens who came in, and we listened to the government, people from from universities and research institutions.

And then we also, of course, listened to industry.

And my biggest takeaway from that, and I think a lot of the reason why we're here today is when there are new technologies that come in when we're talking about, you know, really decarbonizing the supply chain that we've had for over a century.

There's a lot of questions that these communities are having.

And so it was a really good opportunity for them to come ask those questions and kind of, get answers from those subject matter experts.

So from an economic perspective, was the takeaway that this was good for job creation?

And was there discussion about the environment, the potential environmental impacts?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

So on the on the economic front, you know, this this global movement towards decarbonization is really an enormous opportunity for Louisiana.

But I'm going to be honest, it's also an enormous challenge for us.

As I mentioned, we're a net exporter of these products.

We've seen over 100 billions of dollars of investment in Louisiana from companies all over the world over the last decade.

And right now, we're seeing historic level of investment, not only in that petrochemical space, but of course, we had the Hyundai still announcement this last few weeks.

We also had the metadata center.

And all of these companies have these decarbonization commitments.

And so really, the key to think about from an economic perspective is what are the tools in the tool chest, if you will, if you have in order to reduce those emissions of those products that we're selling globally.

So that's on the economic front, I think is very important on the environmental front.

I'm an economist by training.

So of course you can, you know, the ask the technical experts.

But there are lots of questions about this.

You know, number one, is that market going to be able to willing to buy those products that ultimately the reason they want low carbon products is because of the impact on global climate change.

There's also the local environmental questions of what is the safety of these technologies.

And so, yes, certainly cover the economics, but also the environmental implications.

Is there concern that the current demand for things like clean hydrogen and ammonia, will sort of cap out?

How do we how do we even know this demand will be here ten, 20, 30, 40 years from now?

Yeah, that's a that's a really, really important question that I think a lot of the companies are asking themselves whenever they're making these really large investments.

So in the short term, we have the 45 Q tax credit, which is a federal tax credit, that was implemented in 2008 and then later updated and increased in 2022 with the Inflation Reduction Act.

And that, you know, gives some, some, financing to these projects to kind of get, get the projects going to begin with.

But in the long run, as you mentioned, the big question is, is as we decarbonize these supply chains, will the marketplace pay that, that premium for those products?

And there's kind of, you know, two roads that we as a state can take.

The first road is this, look, we're going to get to net zero.

Doesn't matter what the cost is.

Well, if we go down that road, what we might find is, is that our products are no longer cost competitive on that, that global marketplace.

But on the other extreme, if we take what I call the ostrich approach, where we kind of put our head in the sand and say, hey, look, I don't want to think about this decarbonization, we might find that other parts of the world are able to achieve that.

But yeah, that's something that we're watching really closely, and time will tell.

Was there discussion?

This is largely unproven technology.

I mean, we have not.

Louisiana is essentially a guinea pig, a test ground for the widespread and plantation of carbon capture sequestration.

Right.

When we say we can bury it permanently, but we truly don't know because it's never been done permanently and successfully.

Was that part of the task force discussion when we looked at the pros and cons of yes, it creates jobs, and certainly it does do something to improve our environment, but at the same time, do we as a state want to be the guinea pig for this?

Sure.

It's it's a legitimate question.

So global.

There's about 15 active carbon sequestration projects currently, going back to 1996.

Now, there's also, in addition to that, what's called enhanced oil recovery, which there are many other projects out there, but I'm going to kind of put those to the side.

But of those 15 projects, what we've seen is that while we have shown that we can sequester it, while there's a lot of technology that goes into that, the honest truth is the scale at which we're talking about this.

In order to achieve industrial decarbonization in a place like Louisiana, that's going to be a larger scale.

What what makes Louisiana an ideal, marketplace for carbon capture sequestration?

What is it about our state?

Sure.

So there's really, of course, there are a lot of factors, but I think there are three that are the most important.

The first is the source of industrial emissions.

And so that's number one.

If there's no source of emissions then there's there's nothing to to abate.

The second is the geology.

And so again, I'm an economist, but when I speak with the geologists, they tell me this is among the best geology of anywhere in the world in order to do this.

And the third is the regulatory regime.

So Louisiana last year, for about a year now, we've had what's called primacy for class six wells.

Not to get too technical, but that is the type of well that you drill in order to do this, this permanent sequestration.

And Louisiana now has the regulatory regime in order to do that.

Now, we should point out that at this point, the state of Louisiana has not approved permits for, carbon sequestration into these class six.

Well, we have permits out there in the permitting process, but so far, we haven't actually approved a project.

That is correct.

Yeah.

So we have about 80 applications or so for individual wells.

About 30 projects because there can be more wells per project.

But that is correct.

As of today, there has been no permit issued for a class six well in the state of Louisiana.

Now, this task force was held in Baton Rouge.

The entire process.

Did you get any feedback or pushback for the fact that it wasn't held in other communities throughout the state, especially fenceline communities, communities where historically they are, shouldering a disproportionate burden of, industrial and and chemical manufacturing?

Yeah, sure.

So I think that, you know, legislatively created task force, of course, happened at the Capitol, and they're open and public meeting.

And of all the the, the footage of them is put online.

But there's also this need within these communities.

And I have questions and, you know, as part of my role at LSU at the center for Energy Studies, I've actually had the opportunity to go into a lot of these communities and answer a lot of these questions for folks.

And what are you hearing?

What are they saying?

Yeah.

So, you know, there's concerns about groundwater.

There's concerns about the pipelines leaking.

There was an event in Satartia, Mississippi, in 2020 that was, something that I think is talked about a lot and a lot of legitimate questions around that.

There's also questions about when you sequester the carbon, will it come out and kind of seep up over time and then eventually come to the surface.

So there are those those questions in terms of the safety, which by the way, or gediman questions that I think it's really great that communities are asking these questions.

The other is around the economics.

And I'm going to be honest with you.

We are historically an oil and gas state.

When you look at the employment in the upstream oil and gas sector that has dropped in half over the last decade, and a lot of these communities are experiencing that economic hardship.

And at the same time, you've seen this increase in employment in those manufacturing sectors that are selling these products onto this global marketplace.

And so people are really asking themselves, how does this decarbonization movement impact us, and how does CSW fit into that?

And I think there's some fear of, you know, these tax credits going away.

And a lot of this investment may not be in there.

So it's it's it's a lot of legitimate questions.

It is a lot of legitimate questions.

And I do want to circle back to something.

So for viewers who are watching that are not familiar with the Satartia, Mississippi situation, that was a CO2 pipeline that, exploded and created, a release that, sent people to the hospital, and it was quite dangerous.

Now, this was a pipeline.

It wasn't an injection site.

The pipeline was owned by Denbury, which is a subsidiary of Exxon, and it travels through Louisiana.

So you can see how there are concerns, because we're not even talking about buried carbon CO2.

We're actually just talking about the transport.

So you can see the concern.

So when you referenced that, I just wanted to explain for context, what you are talking about, but also circling back to the, to the economic benefits.

To your point, it is very, substantial tax credit, which could be a big boost to the economy in terms of job creation and developing, an energy sector that could be good for diversification and job creation, for sure.

Right.

So there there are the positives.

And coming at it from an economist standpoint for sure.

I do want to also explain to people a little bit about those tax credits, how much are they worth?

And how do they work so that they can really grasp what this could potentially mean to industry?

Sure.

So the tax code is called the 45 two tax credit.

And that is under a section of of tax code in the federal government.

And it's up to $85 per metric ton of carbon dioxide that is permanently sequestered underground.

So the tax credit goes to actually the facility that is emitting the carbon dioxide whenever they abate that emission, meaning they do not have that emission because they were able to sequester it.

They will receive that tax credit.

Then.

That company, though, is now going to have to pay for the capture equipment within their facility.

They'll have to pay for the pipeline access in order to, to move the carbon dioxide, and then ultimately to the sequestration location itself.

All right.

Well, before we go, I want to give you an opportunity.

What would you say is the the most predominant misunderstanding out there in the public about carbon capture, sequestration?

And what would you like to clarify?

Yeah.

So I think, a lot of the questions that come around this are from the safety aspect.

And again, I'm an economist, I'm not a technical expert, but we brought all these kind of technical experts together.

And I think my big takeaway is, is that, look, we take risks in life all the time.

We have lots of energy infrastructure in our state.

And, you know, we've seen transmission lines start fires before in the United States.

We've had, you know, obviously accidents with oil and gas extraction.

And when I asked the subject matter experts, where is carbon capture the the transportation, the sequestration relative to these other energy infrastructures?

They tell me it's kind of on the low risk side.

So I think that's the the one I think big takeaway that I had anyway, from the task force.

All right.

Well, Doctor Upton, thank you so, so much for sharing your expertise with us tonight.

Very valuable certainly to help clarify and explain this very important issue for Louisianans.

All right.

Well, coming up, we will hear from state officials and industry representatives about the policy landscape for carbon capture in Louisiana.

But first, let's look at how one industrial corridor community is responding to proposed carbon capture projects in their backyard.

We█ve smelled these chemicals for decades, and we know that they're killing us.

Yeah, so we're not saying go away.

We're saying keep your chemicals in your plants and in your tanks and in your pipes.

All right?

We're saying don't expand because we're overwhelmed right now.

And we want to live and breathe clean air, just like you and your family.

Thank you.

My name is Kimbrelle Eugene Kyereh.

I was born and raised in Elkinsville-Freetown, a small town in St. Rose, Louisiana, which is in Saint Charles Parish.

I am the founder and executive director of Refined Community Empowerment, based in St. Rose.

Refined community empowerment started in 2023 when I found out that a blue ammonia plant was trying to come into my community and I knew that we were already inundated with legacy pollution.

IMTT is the tank farm that's out there now.

International Matex Tank Terminal, and those chemicals, I know that they're benzene, tauline, acetone, formaldehyde.

There█s the hexanes, the heptanes.

There are lots of harmful chemicals that are emitted from IMTT.

Many of the residents are smelling these fumes in our homes, in our bedrooms.

A lot of times they're in our bedrooms in the middle of the night, early mornings, and there's a chemical test that's on a lot of the residents tongues.

Some residents say that they have headaches, some complain about, heart palpitations.

Some complain about itchy skin, burning eyes, burning nostrils, lots of different experi ences.

Many people contribute their family member's death to the International Matex Tank Terminal, through cancers, through respiratory issues, neurological issues, cardiovascular issues.

These chemicals affect every organ in our bodies.

So here is IMTT back when and in its early days when it first started in 1923, and here it is in 2018.

Just to give you a quick overview.

Too many chemicals, no monitoring.

And now they're trying to bring a blue ammonia plant.

IMTT has partnered with a blue ammonia plant Saint Charles Clean Fuels blue ammonia plant.

And so they're trying to bring blue ammonia.

Ammonia.

And they want to take the carbon dioxide from the process of making that ammonia and sequester it.

Saint Charles Clean Fuels,, they plan to use IMTT█s infrastructure.

They're going to use the tanks to store their ammonia.

They also want to use the pipelines as well as the railways that are very close to IMTT.

Residents of Elkinsville-Freetown, St. Rose, even residents of Saint Charles Parish.

We are petrified because we know that IMTT have not been doing a good job keeping their chemicals contained in their tanks and in their pipes.

So in Saint Charles Clean Fuels plan to use the faulty infrastructure that is in place at IMTT, we are all in trouble because we smell the chemicals from IMTT.

They're escaping.

The fumes, the poison escapes.

So we know that the poisons will escape if that blue ammonia plant comes to our community.

This is Elkinsville-Freetown.

This community was established by a freed man of color.

And he invited other free people to come and settled here and raised their families here.

And the people thought they were truly free.

But now the ancestors of those people are living here in bondage, in bondage of these nasty chemicals.

Now we get chemicals coming into our homes from IMTT, The International Matex Tank Terminal.

And our babies are smelling these.

Many of our children have asthma.

So many of our people also have dementia, premature dementia, Alzheimer's, cancers.

My mom passed away due to complications of Parkinson's.

Nothing like this should happen in America.

We have high standards in America, don't we?

We take care of our people, don't we?

The land of the free.

Home of the brave.

So we want to be free.

We want to be free from these toxic chemicals coming into our homes, into our communities, and into our bodies and killing us.

In 1997, I lost a pregnancy.

My baby's name was Sara.

At that time, I was working at Norco Elementary.

New Orleans Refinery Company, Norco, and sleeping in Elkinsville-Freetown.

Breathing those chemicals So as I was at work in December of 1997 on the campus of Norco Elementary, I went into premature labor and I lost my little precious baby.

She was precious.

The way she moved, it was just sweet.

She was sweet.

And she couldn't be saved at five and a half months of pregnancy.

And I'm not alone.

One of my cousins said, Kim, do you think the reasons we lost our babies is because of these chemicals?

I didn't know, I didn't know, but now I could say probably so, because many of the chemicals caused birth defects and premature labor miscarriages, it's really bad.

And it's really sad.

And we have a lot of painful stories to tell, but we want it to stop.

We want our future generations to to live freer than we have lived.

We want our children to to know what it is, to breathe clean air and to live in the clean community.

That's what they deserve.

We have dealt with this for so many years.

We've lived side by side with industry in some places very peacefully.

Industry has been good to a lot of us, but now we realize we're being sacrificed.

We're being sacrificed.

This is considered Cancer Alley, but also a sacrifice zone where money is made, but it's at the expense of the people, and it's at the expense of the people's health.

We're not here to shut plants down.

We're here to say, keep your chemicals in your plants, in your pipes and in your tanks.

Monitor the air in case the chemicals get out.

And don't bring your nasty friends.

At Louisiana Public Broadcasting, we strive to present balanced discussions with all stakeholders represented.

The Department of Energy and Natural Resources, which oversees permitting for the carbon capture projects we're discussing tonight, plays a crucial role in this conversation.

Now, unfortunately, DENR Secretary Tyler Gray, who had confirmed his participation, informed us less than 24 hours before the taping of this program that he would not be joining our panel.

And we apologize to our viewers for his absence and to Mr. Mike Moncla who will now field questions that we had originally prepared for Secretary Gray.

Now on to our panel of experts.

We are joined by three individuals bringing very different perspectives to the carbon capture conversation.

We have Mike Moncla.

He is the president of the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association.

We have Logan Burke.

She is the executive director of the Alliance for Affordable Energy.

And we have Representative Charles Owen, who represents Louisiana District 30 and is writing several bills that will address CCS and the upcoming legislation.

I want to thank all of you for taking the time to come out and to explain this very, very important issue to our viewers.

The citizens of Louisiana.

Mr. Moncla will start with you.

Why is oil and gas supportive of carbon capture?

What do you see the benefits?

Well, I think first of all, we've been doing this for decades.

And as Mr. Upton mentioned to you, on EOR spectrum, the enhanced oil recovery and, you know, opponents will say that EOR in CCS or CCUS are two different things, but at the end of an EOR project, the carbon is still in the ground.

Okay, we're going to back up and we're going to dial it down.

In layman's terms EOR.

enhanced oil recovery.

So that is when, CO2 is pumped into the ground and it goes into the formation where there's oil wells.

And for lack of a better word, it loosens up that oil, it comes back out and it goes through a system where it separates the oil.

The oil goes into a tank to be sold, and the carbon goes back into the ground.

And at the end of these projects, there is no more carbon to be had.

It's coming from a pipeline, and it stays in the ground and it stays in the ground safely.

And it's been doing that for decades.

So oil and gas industry feels like EOR is proof positive, that carbon sequestration will work and will work safely.

Is that what I'm hearing?

Yes.

And it has been regulated by the DNR for for decades now DENR and so yeah, we feel like they've done a great job of not only, you know, we have primacy on some of the disposal wells, and we also now have primacy on, on the, classics.

So we feel very comfortable and confident that the DNR will handle this in a safe manner, just like they have Iowa for decades now.

Representative Owen, you have concerns about the deployment of this.

Tell us those concerns.

Well, my my concerns are, are are tied to locals being able to make their decisions.

I, I want Louisiana to succeed.

I mean, I am for the oil and gas industry in Louisiana.

It is our foundation of our economy.

It should be a lot better.

Our politicians over recent decades have just about destroyed it with coastal and legacy lawsuits.

And that's something we need to deal with because it's making people like Mike's job impossible.

My concern with carbon sequestration, and I will I will say up front, I don't have any problem with carbon capture.

My concern is forced sequestration in places where citizens don't want it.

And so that's how I that's why I walk into this debate, is that I have, I have citizens and I have safety concerns over that going, both to where I live and to any community where they don't want it.

I, I'm a big, big believer in federalism.

I was not a scientist.

But I was a civics guy, and I believe in local control of things.

And we have traditions of that here in Louisiana.

I mean, we let people decide if they wanted alcohol or gambling in their parishes.

So I look at this as a business activity that the parishes ought to be able to decide on.

Ms. Burke, your concerns are the safety of this, from the Alliance for Affordable Energies perspective, we are concerned both about the safety of all pieces of that of the system that is the capture piece and the various facilities that carbon capture would be attached to, including power plants.

But also the pipelines.

We heard from Doctor Upton about what has happened in Satartia.

There was also a release just last year in Louisiana from one of these pipelines.

And then in addition to that, what we don't know about the injection wells, but what we're also concerned about is the affordability.

So many of the facilities that we've been talking about here, ammonia facilities and so forth, those are, making products.

But when we are talking about power plants that would serve Louisianans, we're also talking about Louisianans pocketbooks, because if these things do not perform as expected, frankly, even if they do, Louisiana residents already can't afford their utility bills.

And we have no idea how expensive this is going to get.

Mr. Moncla, to Representative Owen█s his point about localities, parishes, communities should have the right to determine whether they want this in their community.

How do you respond to that?

Well, I mean, I, I see their plight.

I understand where they are on that.

But when you have companies investing in our state, billions of dollars, the communities are going to get money out of this as well.

I mean, from in the form of, you know, the ad valorem tax, the the sales tax, when people come in in their communities, it is going to provide, jobs.

So I think that you can't have, you know, an a one of their, one of the bills, not necessarily his, but is on the eminent domain piece.

And you can't have one person out of 100 ruin the project for the 99 that want to be leased and a company that wants to spend billions.

So yeah, I just think that, you know, we can't stop industry from continuing to grow in our state.

That is a valid point.

And as we saw in the story in Elkinsville, their concern is, number one, they don't feel like they have a voice.

But number two, if this is deployed, they're worried about using aging infrastructure, aging pipes, leakages, other things that will exacerbate, their environmental concerns.

I think that that seems to be in your area a point of advocacy.

Right?

It is.

Already we know that our our permitting process and enforcement, is not keeping people safe.

We know this.

And but furthermore, it's not keeping people aware of what's actually happening.

We've seen that, some of these toxic releases from some of the facilities that we already have, not even talking about new ones and expanded ones, that, announcements aren't coming out to help the communities understand what is happening around them.

We've had air monitoring bills fail over and over in our state because we've continued to choose business over people.

And so these communities that are full up with these facilities that aren't making their lives better are really tired of of being asked to hold more burden.

And so we are saying, let's think about the systemic and not only not put more into these communities or new communities that are being asked to hold these burdens.

But let's, let's think about how do we address the past, the historic and current harms before we say, oh, this is going to be different this time.

So to bring balance to this conversation, Mr. Moncla, I want you to talk about what you see as the economic and environmental benefits of carbon capture and sequestration.

Well, I mean, just the instance we just saw in that, town near St. Rose, you know, this is an opportunity to take what she says has been a problem with pollution and putting it out of the ground.

It might improve their, their, the smells that they claim they smell.

I've been there to, to, to to witness that, but it's an opportunity to take smokestacks and turn them upside down, and and it goes into the ground.

Do you mind if I.

Of course.

Yes.

This is a conversation.

Anyone jump in at any point?

Yes.

The very purpose of carbon capture and sequestration is exactly what's in the name.

It's about capturing the carbon.

The co-pollutants are almost certainly not, not part of the goal here.

What we do know is that adding new power plants or new chemical facilities means net new emissions, even if it's able to capture 98% of the carbon, which is already something that is in question, that is still net new emissions for these communities.

Well, and as we saw in Elkinsville, just to refer back to that, the issue was the ammonia emissions, the smell that they were.

So yes, to your point, if we can capture and bury that safely, that is great.

But what about the other residual chemicals that industry brings to it?

Because there is this concern that carbon capture sequestration will enable the continued production of fossil fuels and disincentivize, developing more renewable energy sources.

Step in real quick.

Yes, that's a great point.

And all this needs to be fleshed out.

But there are a couple things I would like to address.

First of all, the issue of eminent domain, eminent domain is as old as our country.

It's in the fifth Fifth amendment.

I lost land to eminent domain ten years ago.

The army.

Army took property from my family again in Vernon Parish, from eminent domain.

That happens.

But it's for a public good.

And I have yet to have anyone explain to me how a company benefiting from this project is a public good.

This is doing no public good.

This is not producing energy.

It is creating a waste.

And look, that video we just saw really disturbs me because the people that are trying to sell this where I live, we're going, look, we're just pulling carbon out of the air.

There's nothing poison in there.

What was that?

So there's there's two ways that things get in that pipe.

There's a direct air capture, and then there's pulling it off of those of off of those pipes or off of those production facilities.

But the concern is we don't know what's going to go in the ground.

And we don't know if it's going to move.

There's a lot of consternation along those things.

And as far as the impact goes, y'all, you talk about billions of dollars.

I, I get all that.

I want Louisiana to get good money.

But they're talking about in our part of the state.

I've asked Louisiana economic development multiple times what are three passive wells going to do in my parish?

And they stare at me like a dog looking at a new pan.

They just want to dump it where I live.

Well, we will continue this conversation because we will get into monitoring and and some additional safety and environmental concerns as well as benefits.

Because again, this is about weighing the cost and the benefits.

And it is a very difficult, and complicated equation.

And I can respect that for all three of you here.

So we're going to continue our discussion shortly.

But first, let's hear from Healthy Gulf about their concerns over the risks that abandoned and orphaned wells create for carbon capture.

Take a look.

Okay.

199623 Equitable Petroleum Corporation.

Lower perforation, 11,000ft.

My name is Scott Eustis.

I'm the community science director for Healthy Gulf.

And we've been tracking just the explosion of orphan and inactive wells across the state in the last ten years, including this orphan.

Well, here, property of the state of Louisiana.

This wells drilled down past 11,000ft.

And yet the state has leased this whole lake for CO2 storage at 3000ft.

So we're concerned that that highly corrosive CO2 would dissolve what's left of this well, and escape to the atmosphere and endanger boaters out on lake kind of watch.

So it's the kind of thing we don't need in the wetlands of Louisiana.

Louisiana has six times the national rate of gas pipeline incidents in our coastal zone.

We have hurricane, those flood events from the river or from the Gulf flex that steel caused leaks in pipelines.

And then you have problems.

And so we have to wonder why then is Louisiana ground zero for this carbon waste injection technology?

We're here in Jefferson Parish looking at an Enlink pipeline.

It's a 30 inch gas pipeline run through the marsh and swamps to Chalmette.

If the CO2 leaks were to come into effect, the company would likely use this right away.

Would put a new pipeline here, Enlinc has proposed to reuse their gas pipelines, which we think is not a good idea in Jefferson Parish, because we know this pipeline has leaked after Hurricane Ivan and Hurricane Ida.

And in both of those cases, if it were a high pressure CO2 link, we would need oxygen on this boat in order to just get away.

The CO2 leak depressurization throws up the ground.

Makes a big cone of dirt for 40ft.

It also freezes everything and then asphyxiate you and asphyxiate your boat.

Well, there was an eight inch pipeline in Yazoo County, Mississippi.

There was CO2 pipeline after a rain.

The land shifted, and when the land shifted, it ruptured the the pipe and it blew a hole in the ground.

First responders had to use electric golf carts to get people out, because EMTs and ambulances just wouldn't run because there was a plume of CO2 throughout the town.

Dispatcher: What is the location of the emergency?

Caller: I am like five minutes off of highway three My friend, she█s laying on the ground.

And she█s shaking.

She's kind of drooling out of the mouth.

I don't know if she's having a seizure or not.

Okay, baby.

Is this in the Satartia area?

Yeah.

A pipeline shouldn't just rupture because because it rains, especially a CO2 pipeline.

There was a hole in the ground 60ft deep and 200ft across from an eight inch pipeline.

This is a 30 inch pipeline.

So if that would, they would run CO2 through a pipeline that already has a history of leaking.

You imagine a hole in the ground, a 30ft pipe for CO2 would make CO2 underground is a whole new game.

It's a slippery fish, they might tell you that, oh, we've done enhanced oil recovery.

But yeah, that's putting pressure downhole.

And something else hopefully oil comes up.

What we haven't done is try to keep this, highly buoyant material much more buoyant than natural gas, much more corrosive than natural gas.

We trying to keep that slippery fish 3000ft under the earth.

It's going to push.

It's going to move.

And the geologists say that it can escape 20km uphill.

So in this case, if you injected CO2 in Lake Chattahoochee, the geologist say it would still be high.

High enough concentration as it roll.

If it rolls uphill tomorrow to affect our drinking water wells in Jefferson Parish, even on the east bank.

So 20km is a lot to think about, and it's too much to think about.

We we would just say this technology is too unstable.

We would say it's proven to not work, and it's totally unsuitable for a place like Lake kind of watchi where the pipelines leak during hurricanes.

We are back to continue our discussion with our panel of experts.

And so we just heard from Healthy Gulf, and they're saying, why should Louisiana be ground zero for carbon sequestration?

You're saying we should be because we have all of this relevant, related experience when it comes to CO2 underground with air, things we discussed earlier in our program.

Having said that, what insurances can you give viewers in regards to the safety and the long term assurance that CO2 will remain buried permanently?

Because that's what we're promising people.

Yeah, well, again, it's been buried permanently in EOR for for decades.

But there's no safer transportation method than pipelines.

I mean, it is total anomalies when when things like that happen, you know, a hurricane has to do it.

We have, you know, maybe one breach here, one breach there.

Over three, four decades of doing this, I would rather be a molecule of carbon or natural gas than be on a plane anywhere.

I mean, it is the safest form of transportation that is out there.

And I'd like to hear your thoughts, both of you on that.

On that particular point, the thing that concerns me is we understand from some metallurgists, I'm going to get into something really specific here for a moment that, because of the corrosive nature of CO2, that this is it requires a different kind of steel.

It actually requires in order to, to ensure that these pipelines are safe and secure.

It requires a really different sort of mix of steel.

And we know that that mix of steel is quite expensive.

And therefore, because we don't currently have federal rules that require the level of safety that is necessary for this corrosive material, we are very concerned that these companies are not going to spend that money on the more secure kind of steel represented by one.

Thank you.

Want to take it on on a quick, asymmetric, diversion?

I, I reject the notion that we need to capture carbon at all for the environment.

These guys have been doing it for oil and gas recovery.

Great.

It is not settled science.

It is not settled science that the Earth's climate is changing because of man's activity.

There are scientists who believe that I just got through reading a book, my PhD from Stanford, who says the opposite.

So it is not settled science.

And I think it is highly dangerous for us to go down this path, to put ourselves in danger, to put our communities in danger for something like that.

I would also say we, we talk a lot about what we're going to do with this carbon, what we're going to do with it.

We're going to start talking about these 45 Q tax credits.

Well, as we were talking about when we're coming in here, we all had to look into this topic, right?

There are lots of options inside.

45 Q you can put this stuff inside of concrete.

You can put it in a fertilizer plant.

There's lots of things you can do if you're heck bent on capturing carbon, but sticking it in the ground does not have to be the only option.

Yeah, I want to ask just a very fundamental and I think logical question do we actually have enough real estate, so to speak, to store the vast amounts of CO2 that we're talking about to develop this, this emerging industry?

I guess that's my question.

Well, and that'd be more of a question for Tyler Gray.

I mean, they are not going to just give anybody a permit to do this.

I mean, they are going to it's very stringent and there's a lot of things that they're going to have to do.

No one's going to drill a well without carbon, without a grown pipe.

If that's what the EPA or the LDNR says is necessary, they do not use it in EOR and we don't have any problems.

All right, Logan, you are you're gunning to say something, so I'm going to let you speak.

I have to point out what's happened internationally with the, CCS and in particular these deep, carbon injection wells, and that is that each time.

And it's happened in, Algeria, Australia, Norway.

But each time there's a plan for a large scale.

We heard about scale, right?

A large scale injection of, of the CO2 at a really high rate.

You get seismic seismic activity that the geologists who'd been studying that land and, and and that geology for years never expected.

It happens every time.

And each time the geologists and the companies.

And this happened to Exxon and Chevron that co-own the Gorgon, LNG facility in, Australia.

They had to quickly reassess.

Okay, where are we going to move?

We have to find new wells.

We have to because it it doesn't act the way the geologists expect it to.

Yeah.

So I want to speak on the on the international situation since, since you brought that up I having to dig in where in no pun intended having to look into where in the world we carbon sequestration has done it yet Norway, some places in the north, a couple of places in the United States, certainly not down here.

But as far as what goes on internationally, we keep hearing this, that there is a demand for us to sell this clean energy overseas.

What I have uncovered in my research is that is demonstrably not true.

Last year, Germany signed a long term energy agreement with US, United States to buy LNG.

Sequestration is not mentioned in there.

Carbon is barely mentioned in there.

We may be thinking it's going to happen, but as I'm told, there's a new LNG plant coming into Lake Charles.

The third one, who has no plans to do carbon sequestration.

All right, so on to my next important question.

And I think a lot of people are like, how how can we monitor this and ensure that there is not going to be any seepage into our drinking water leaking from the burial sites?

What do you say to that?

Well, each of these wells and one of the reasons that oil and gas is for this is things have been very slow for service companies and oil and gas in Louisiana.

And each of these wells requires, what's called a class five.

Well, a stretched well.

So you drill that to prove out the geology, then you drill the storage well, and then after that, you have to drill six to maybe ten monitoring wells all around it.

You might have ten wells to drill for one project.

So for, for our service industry that is really hurting for business, that's not a bad thing.

And those monitoring wells do exactly what you just said.

They monitor.

They can, see if there's anything coming up.

If there is, they can shut it down.

They can do different things to to avoid the situation.

Logan, you have some thoughts on this that you want to share?

Well, it I heard the the point about all of the new jobs that will be coming from all of these facilities.

And I would like to point out the thousands of jobs that could be created if we actually addressed prior harms, which is all of those orphaned and abandoned wells.

And the reason I pointed out is we're here talking about capturing carbon, which is very expensive and energy intensive.

Process and then pipelines and then injection, if we were to address our orphan and abandoned wells, which are not just problems for safety, they are also problems for leaking methane, which remains a true challenge to our greenhouse gas emissions problem.

So if we were to really reassess what it is to be an energy state and put people back to work who have had wonderful careers in the oil field to clean up these past harms, we could do a lot of good for reducing our greenhouse.

We're going to end on that concept, and it's going to become a question that I'm going to ask the three of you.

Representative Owen what does it mean to be an energy state in Louisiana?

To get the government out of the way to allow for America to establish its energy dominance?

And that's incumbent upon of the legislature?

Listen, I, I am not mad at the law community or people who've been doing those things because the legislators and governors have created this terrible paradigm when we need to get out of the way and let people like Mike Moncla and the energy producers let us become energy dominant again and then we wouldn't be wasting our time with silly things like this.

Mr. Moncla what does it mean?

What does it mean to be an energy state?

Ten years ago, my family business had ten rigs running in the inland waters of Louisiana.

We had to cut those into pieces and sell them for scrap.

It was a painful exercise.

So yeah, I would love to get back to work.

And, the lawsuit environment that we're in, whether it be Coastal Legacy, those are things that have hindered our business and hurt our state.

And so, yeah, I would love to see us, fix the legal problems that we have and get back to work.

Miss Burke, what does it mean for Louisiana to be an energy state?

I think if if Louisiana wants to be an energy state, a successful one, that then energy has to work for everyone.

And that is not what is happening right now.

Our energy costs are too high for people who are living at home just trying to keep the lights on as it gets hotter and colder.

But also, we aren't diversifying our energy systems.

We in Louisiana are not moving on the tried and true renewable energy systems that are creating huge economic opportunities around the country.

And so we really need to think differently about what it what it can mean to have an energy job and be a successful energy state.

All right.

Well, I want to thank the three of you for joining us to take a deep dive into this very, complicated and controversial subject as we try to move our state forward, economically speaking, and also in terms of our energy evolution.

So I'm afraid we are out of time for our discussion.

Again, thank you all so much for sharing your perspectives, your voices very critical as we make these important decisions about the future of Louisiana.

So thank you.

Now, what do you, our viewers, think?

We encourage you to comment on tonight's show by visiting lpb.org/louisianaspotlight and clicking on the Join the Conversation link.

We would love to hear your thoughts on carbon capture and its implications for Louisiana's future.

Thank you for watching.

And remember that as Louisiana navigates the carbon crossroads, the decisions that we make today will shape our environmental and economic landscape for generations to come.

Good night.

For a copy of this program, call 1-800-973-7246 or go online to WW.

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