BP’s CCS Scheme
On December 2, 2022, the Benton County Commissioners and the Benton County Plan Commission held a joint meeting to determine how they could possibly protect the health and welfare of their constituents in the face of a carbon sequestration law, HEA1209 (2022) that restricts the authority of county commissions.
As Commissioner Bryan Berry remarked during the meeting, “HB1209 puts a choke hold on not only Benton County but the rest of the counties in our great state...” by taking away home rule, hampering the ability of local officials to enact local solutions to local issues and problems.
The hearing room was packed with citizens concerned with the idea that BP wants to pipe and inject potentially millions of tons of toxic, highly pressurized carbon dioxide under their property – a process called carbon sequestration. And they should be concerned. BP's oil refinery in Whiting, IN, is one of the worst water polluters in the country. And who can forget that BP's Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 is still the "largest spill of oil in the history of marine oil drilling operations?"
Earthquakes
The U.S. Geological Survey, or USGS, is still attempting to determine whether carbon sequestration is safe. In initial findings for the carbon sequestration hub designated by the U.S. Department of Energy, or DOE, in which Indiana is included, USGS found that similar conditions exist in this designated carbon sequestration zone that led to hundreds of earthquakes in Oklahoma caused by the injection of tens of millions of gallons of toxic wastewater from natural gas fracking wells that, in some instances, resulted in property damage. The strength of the earthquakes is expected to increase, as wastewater disposal continues. Earthquakes have also occurred miles from the injection zones, indicating that the liquid toxic waste travels long distances underground.
USGS is also concerned with the potential for groundwater pollution from carbon dioxide escaping from the so-called caprock, the layer of rock that is supposed to keep it at lower depths, and with the potential for carbon dioxide to escape into the atmosphere. Unlike naturally occurring earthquakes, these fracking waste-induced earthquakes tend to occur at shallower depths and can fracture the caprock, according to USGS. This could also happen with the injection of highly pressurized, liquified carbon dioxide waste into the earth.
In other words, analysts are certain that carbon dioxide pipelines and sequestration present potentially significant, specific environmental and human health threats but Indiana state government is promoting it anyway.
Asphyxiation
Carbon dioxide must be compressed and pressurized in order to transport in pipelines and to inject into the ground. Compressed carbon dioxide is referred to as supercritical carbon dioxide and is so corrosive that it is used as an industrial solvent. The corrosiveness of compressed CO2 recently led to the failure of pipelines in Mississippi.
Responders to the accident said that some victims exposed to the concentrated carbon dioxide looked like wandering zombies. Some were found unconscious. Hundreds of people were evacuated from the area and dozens sent to hospitals. Carbon dioxide is heavier than air, so large releases settle rather dissipate in the atmosphere, which can asphyxiate people and animals living near the pipeline, which nearly happened in the Mississippi incident.
Indiana Law
Gov. Holcomb, at the signing of Senate Bill 442 in 2019 that approved a carbon sequestration project in Vigo County (Wabash Valley Resources, or WVR), referred to carbon sequestration as “a great economic opportunity,” according to the Terre Haute Tribune-Star. But it really is just a sprawling hazardous waste dump deep underground rather than near the surface, fraught with threats to public health and property values. Adding insult to injury to Vigo County residents, the state legislature, despite paucity of information, determined that no further study was needed.
HEA1209 (2022) impacts large portions of Indiana and goes even further. The legislation makes Indiana taxpayers liable, instead of BP or other corporations, for any problems that arise after the sequestration site is “closed” – in other words, forever. Not a smart move.
CCS Doesn’t Decarbonize Anything
CCS advocates like BP and WVR refer to the practice as “decarbonizing” their industry. However, CCS is just another end-of-pipe waste management strategy.
BP wants to capture carbon dioxide from using fossil gas (methane) to produce hydrogen, called steam methane reforming. For one, BP is still using a fossil fuel as a feedstock – hardly a decarbonization strategy – whose fracking-based fuel cycle consumes enormous amounts of water, produces enormous amounts of waste, and is a public health disaster. Secondly, the steam methane reform process produces 7 to 10 times more carbon dioxide than it does hydrogen. That means that the 200,000 tons per year of hydrogen that BP wants to “decarbonize” would result in up to 2 million tons of captured carbon dioxide annually that the company wants to pipe to and “store” under Benton County.
