Carbon pipeline says it has secured easements for half of Nebraska route

“We’re actually, as we speak, going over 50% of acquired right-of-way in the state of Nebraska,” said Lee Blank, who was named CEO of Summit Carbon Solutions in July. “That’s ahead of schedule and going very well.”

Across the pipeline’s 14-county footprint in Nebraska, the Midwest Carbon Express has obtained land rights for 67% of its proposed route in Dakota County, where a 10-inch main line will carry carbon dioxide to a connection point northeast of Sioux City, Iowa.

Summit Carbon Solutions has also secured easements on 85% of the proposed route in Stanton County, where the pipeline splits into two laterals, one heading northwest, the other southwest; 61% in Merrick County; and 63% in Nance County, the company said in a news release.

Since it began negotiations in 2021, Summit Carbon Solutions has paid out about $24 million to Nebraska landowners for the right to build a pipeline connecting to ethanol plants in six Nebraska communities: Plainview, Norfolk, Atkinson, York, Central City and Wood River.

The cost of acquiring the route in Nebraska has been a bit higher than what Summit anticipated, Blank said. The price of agricultural land, as well as rising commodity prices, has played into the rising cost of obtaining easements.

“It’s not what I would consider critical, but it is higher,” Blank said. “It comes as no surprise for our board of directors that we’re having to spend a little bit more based on the farm economy and the price of land in those states.

“Based on the fact we’re a schedule-driven project, we tend to push those economic discussions to reach resolution, which ends up costing us a little bit more,” he added.

Blank said the recent milestone is encouraging because it demonstrates a rising level of “adoption” by Nebraska landowners for the pipeline project in Nebraska.

While Summit Carbon Solutions is touting the progress made in Nebraska and other states along the pipeline’s path, environmentalists, public health organizations, landowner rights groups and Native tribes have joined to oppose it.

Those unlikely alliances have led to calls asking the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration to delay any action on the carbon pipelines until new safety guidelines can be established, as well as calls to states and counties to review rules regulating where those infrastructure projects can be located.

Regulators in Iowa and South Dakota are currently reviewing permit applications from Summit Carbon Solutions, and could approve the project sometime next year.

Nebraska, which doesn’t have state regulations governing carbon pipelines, leaves the permitting process up to the individual counties.

Blank said the company hopes to begin construction on the pipeline in the fourth quarter of 2023. Where the first shovels go into the ground will depend upon where the company feels like it can make progress.

“The nice thing about us, we can start in various places,” he said. “We don’t have to start in A, B, or C, we can be flexible in where we start.”

While Summit Carbon Solutions said it hopes to find “an economic resolution” to securing rights to the full route — Blank said he believes the company can secure most of the route through voluntary easements — it might have to file eminent domain proceedings in some cases.

“I would see that as a very small percentage by the time we’re finished,” Blank said.

The notion that the private company could use eminent domain to seize land in order to complete its route has generated opposition in Nebraska and elsewhere, however.

About 60 landowners have signed up with the Nebraska Easement Action Team, which describes itself as a kind of legal co-op, to provide advice on property rights, or assistance in securing better terms on any right-of-way acquisition deals. More have signed up to be on an email list with updates, organizers said.

Similar legal co-ops set up to allow landowners to pool their resources have been formed in Iowa and South Dakota — where landowners have sued the carbon pipeline companies to stop them from surveying property — with hundreds of individuals having joined to date.

Jane Kleeb, the founder and president of Bold Alliance and the chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party, said she believes more landowners along the carbon pipeline routes will join as litigation is settled in other states.

“We don’t have the same pressure right now because we don’t have a state regulatory body,” Kleeb said. “Landowners are waiting to see what happens, knowing lots of litigation and moving parts are ahead of us.”

Summit Carbon Solutions’ project is one of four carbon dioxide pipelines currently being planned in Nebraska.

Navigator Ventures, which relocated from Iowa to Omaha earlier this year, is planning the 1,300-mile Heartland Greenway to sequester carbon dioxide at an underground site in Illinois; the Trailblazer Pipeline proposes converting 392 miles of existing natural gas pipeline into a carrier of CO2 that connects to the Eastern Wyoming Sequestration Hub; and Carbon America has proposed a pipeline that would transport CO2 from a single biorefinery in the Panhandle to a storage site 10 miles away.

Companies that capture and sequester greenhouse gases can claim a tax credit known as 45Q created by Congress in 2008 that was expanded as part of a recent infrastructure package.

The 45Q tax credit currently provides $32 per ton of carbon dioxide permanently stored underground. The incentive will increase to $50 per ton beginning in 2026.