The controversial carbon pipeline backed by Oklahoma oilman Harold Hamm, among others, just announced a change in its route and it will avoid going through North Dakota and South Dakota after facing permitting obstacles.
Summit Carbon Solutions had targeted North Dakota as the destination of its proposed carbon dioxide pipeline but announced this week a new route will take the line to a storage site in Wyoming.
The North Dakota Monitor reported that Summit’s announcement indicated its pipeline would run through Iowa and Nebraska to Wyoming, with no mention of North Dakota and South Dakota. A spokesperson said North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota “remain important for our company.”
The pipeline faced legal challenges after obtaining permits for both the pipeline and an underground storage area near Bismarck. Two district court judges have determined the underground storage permits and the law they were issued under are unconstitutional, casting the project’s future into question. Both decisions are expected to be appealed to the North Dakota Supreme Court, according to the report by the Monitor.
The company, backed by major financing from Harold Hamm, founder and leader of Continental Resources, failed to get permits from South Dakota. Too many landowners resisted.
Summit Carbon Solutions previously received a significant financial commitment from Hamm who viewed carbon capture as both an economic opportunity and a strategic fit with North Dakota’s dominant Bakken shale play, where Continental is a major operator.
In March 2022, The Des Moines Register reported that Continental committed $250 million to Summit. At that time, Summit estimated its project cost at $4.5 billion. Today, that estimate has doubled to roughly $9 billion, making the legal setback even more consequential. The project proposed to transport CO₂ from ethanol plants in five states to a North Dakota sequestration site, injecting the gas deep underground for long-term storage.
But the prospect of court fights prompted Summit to come up with a new route which would have included more than 2,000 miles of pipeline to connect 57 ethanol plants, in five states, to a storage facility in North Dakota. The new route will connect to 27 ethanol plants in Iowa.
At last word, only one North Dakota ethanol plant, Tharaldson Ethanol near Casselton, had signed on to the project. While some corn growers believed the carbon pipeline would have supported the ethanol industry and the farmers who supply the plants with corn, some landowners and environmental groups fought the project.
“For the folks that this could have helped, it’s too bad that Summit used the tactics that they did,” said Troy Coons, chair of the Northwest Landowners Association. in North Dakota.
“This one caused an uprising in multiple states with so many people being offended and their constitutional rights being threatened.”