Lawmakers recently debated how much say landowners should have when companies want to build new pipelines for carbon dioxide, ultimately tipping toward industry.
The draft bill in question would’ve required 66% of landowners in a CO2 pipeline's path to be on board with the project. Currently, a project would fall under Wyoming Constitution language for eminent domain, which doesn’t require that majority. In its most basic sense, eminent domain allows the taking of private property for public use, as long as there is fair market compensation.
“It doesn't go to the extreme where one person can stop or can force a project,” said Brett Moline, Wyoming Farm Bureau Federation’s policy advocacy director, to lawmakers about the draft bill. “I think it's a good middle ground. This kind of brings everybody to the table to negotiate a fair deal for everybody.”
Wyoming Stock Growers Association’s Jim Magagna expressed a similar sentiment to the 13 lawmakers on the Joint Agriculture, State and Public Lands & Water Resources committee.
Wyoming is expecting more CO2 pipelines in the future, with projects in the works. The University of Wyoming (UW) describes the greenhouse gas as a commodity.
“Most CO2 is used as an injectant for enhanced oil recovery (EOR), a technique used to recover 30 to 60 percent more oil from mature fields,” according to a UW pipeline guide. “CO2-based EOR accounts for 6% of total annual oil production in Wyoming, generating approximately $26,000,000 annually in state tax revenue.”
CO2 is essentially pumped underground to help push out more oil from an otherwise tapped oil field. Currently, there are more than 300 miles of CO2 pipeline in Wyoming. It connects Lincoln County’s Shute Creek gas processing plant, which captures CO2, to several oil fields in central and northeast Wyoming.
While no one at the committee hearing knew the last time eminent domain was used for pipelines in the state, the Petroleum Association of Wyoming (PAW) and the Legislative Service Office (LSO) said it’s been decades.
“What I hope it says to you is that the balance is working,” said PAW President Pete Obermueller to lawmakers about negotiations between companies and landowners.
Obermueller said he didn’t support the draft bill, adding that projects in Campbell County and the Big Horn Basin could be jeopardized.
“It is very realistic, because we deal with it every day in the Powder River Basin, that land owners – quite rightly, not criticizing at all – work together in very large groups in order to negotiate with my members to get the highest and best price for what they own or for crossing their land, etc,” said Obermueller. “It is not a hurdle for them to prevent getting to 66% [approval].”
Rep. Bob Davis (R-Baggs) sided with PAW, explaining why he was going to vote ‘no.’
“This has just thrown up some more roadblocks, for what? For the industry that doesn't need any more roadblocks,” Davis said. “Our current federal leadership has been tearing down the roadblocks. So I don't know why we're throwing another roadblock in the way.”
Rep. Karlee Provenza (D-Laramie) was also a ‘no’ vote, but for other reasons.
“Generally, I would be in favor of putting up roadblocks for this industry,” she said. “But unfortunately, we're in a budget session, and I think that this is messy. So, I'm going to be voting ‘no’ out of respect for the budget session and the constitutional job that we have.”
Wyoming’s legislative sessions alternate each year between focusing on budgetary issues and policy issues.
Sen. Laura Pearson (R-Kemmerer) ultimately voted for the draft bill, but she was initially skeptical. Pearson said she supports CO2 pipelines to help with the oil industry, but worries about other uses, like climate change initiatives.
“I'm not really in favor of pipelines being built just to sequester carbon dioxide because I think it's very important that we have it in our air,” she said.
Pearson is referring to carbon capture and sequestration efforts. In order to slow down the worst effects of human-caused climate change, the vast majority of scientists say we need to emit drastically less greenhouse gases, like CO2.
Some say capturing CO2 from the atmosphere or fossil fuel production and permanently storing it underground is the answer. The practice is largely untested at commercial scale, but Wyoming has spent tens of millions of dollars and years of research to prove otherwise.
However, Pearson and other Freedom Caucus colleagues have expressed they fundamentally don't believe in human-caused climate change.
At the committee meeting, Rep. Steve Johnson (R-Cheyenne) had similar feelings to Pearson about sequestering carbon, calling it a “war on carbon.”
But Continental Resources’ Shelley Shelby reassured them, “We hate wind. We hate solar.”
Continental Resources is one of the largest privately owned oil and gas companies in the U.S. It recently expanded into Wyoming and is hedging on additional pipelines to deliver CO2 to its oil fields.
“It is actually oil and gas that is doing this, not some Green New Deal, Biden thing,” Shelby said.
Shelby opposed the landowner buy-in requirement because she said it could handcuff industry. Ultimately, lawmakers didn’t pass the draft bill.
Other committee business
Another eminent domain draft bill came to the committee, but it was short-lived. Some lawmakers were cautious to take it up, as they felt it came to them through an unusual process.
Sen. Larry Hicks (R-Baggs), who’s not on the committee, pitched the last-minute bill to one of the committee’s co-chairs, seeking to bar watershed districts from using eminent domain. Sen. Bob Ide (R-Casper) wanted the committee to consider it in their final meeting of the interim. A hard copy version was given to the committee that day, as it had been largely changed from what was posted online.
Rep. Provenza interjected with a lot of skepticism.
“I would caution the committee to even consider this,” she said. “Otherwise, anyone could lobby our committee at any point and bring a bill that they have as a personal bill at any point, and then we don't have to go through the proper process.”
Typically, an issue is brought to a legislative committee early in the interim and lawmakers ask LSO to draft a bill. It’s made available to the public, and lawmakers hold additional public hearings and discuss possible amendments. Then they vote whether to move it forward to the main legislative session.
But this bill didn’t go through that process.
“There's nothing keeping the good senator [Hicks] from bringing this as his own personal bill,” Provenza said. “But it would be an egregious overstep of how the committee does procedures if this is how we're going to start conducting business.”
The committee chose not to consider it. Lawmakers agreed they can sign on to Hick’s bill individually before the session starts in February.
