Proposals to Build California’s First Carbon Storage Facilities Face a Key Test

September 15, 2024

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by Emma Foehringer Merchant and Joshua Yeager (Inside Climate News and KVPR) Experts say extensive monitoring of the sites will be required to ensure safety. -- ... Proposals to build California’s first carbon storage facilities are facing key tests in the coming weeks, beginning with a vote by the Kern County Planning Commission Thursday night.

The commission will decide whether to approve plans submitted by two oil companies, Aera Energy and California Resources Corporation (CRC), to build and operate the facilities. The companies want to inject planet-warming carbon dioxide deep beneath active oil fields.

CRC’s project, called Carbon TerraVault 1, is farther along; it has already received a conditional permit from the Environmental Protection Agency to inject carbon.

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The projects have been the subject of heated debate in the heart of California’s oil country. County leaders see carbon removal and storage as a way to generate tax revenue as the state plans to phase out oil drilling over the next two decades, while helping to combat climate change. But some residents, along with environmental advocates and local community groups, say the projects come with too many risks and too much uncertainty.

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Her (Sonia Sanchez's) fear stems in part from an incident that happened in 2020, when a carbon dioxide pipeline ruptured near the small Mississippi town of Satartia, sending more than 40 people to the hospital. At very high concentrations, the gas is an asphyxiant.

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But others in nearby oil towns have embraced the industry.

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While some environmental advocates and community groups say they are wary of the oil industry’s poor health and safety record, the county appears confident that it can mitigate risks. Planning Commission staff have recommended approval for both Aera and CRC’s proposals.

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California’s San Joaquin Basin, where Kern County is located, is one of a few dozen basins in the United States that is well-suited geologically for carbon storage.

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A downturn in oil production in recent decades has pushed the county to consider other options to support its economy. Those same rock formations are ideal for trapping carbon dioxide, said Preston Jordan, a geologist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Regions with a legacy of oil and gas production have an advantage when it comes to carbon storage, he said, because “there’s essentially geologic proof of concept.”

There are just a few dedicated carbon storage projects operating in the U.S., but geologic experts including Jordan say the science around storing the planet-warming greenhouse gas underground is well understood. That’s largely because of a practice called “enhanced oil recovery,” in which oil companies inject carbon dioxide underground to help push more oil to the surface. The practice has been in use for decades; nationwide, there are more than 130 projects using enhanced oil recovery, pushing nearly two billion cubic feet of carbon dioxide underground, according to a consulting company that tracks the industry.

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Permanently storing carbon dioxide is technologically similar to enhanced oil recovery, according to oil industry and carbon storage experts. “Even if it hasn’t been implemented largely at scale yet, we still generally understand how it works,” said Rohan Dighe, a carbon storage analyst at energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie.

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But some environmental advocates are concerned that the large number of holes drilled through the rocks that underlie Kern County could allow carbon dioxide to escape.

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In a response to public comments about CRC’s proposed project, the county noted that Kern County has held “oil and gas deposits for millions of years at pressures at or above the project’s CO2 storage pressure,” and though the site has many wells, no leakage has been recorded during past injection into these wells. (DiGiulio said there is no evidence that leakage monitoring happened.)

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“Induced seismicity has been, in my opinion, the largest hazard associated with CO2 injection,” said Joern Kaven, a research geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey.

Kaven has monitored such seismicity for a decade at a carbon storage test facility in Illinois. The largest earthquake during that time was a mere 1.26 in magnitude, a small temblor that wouldn’t be felt at the surface. But Kaven said “there is an inherent risk” that injecting liquid underground may cause earthquakes. In Oklahoma, and Ohio—in areas with no prior knowledge of geologic faults—injection of oil wastewater, a process similar to carbon injection, has induced earthquakes at magnitudes greater than 3.0, shaking residents.

The potential impacts of injection on natural faults are important to consider in areas where earthquakes are not uncommon, like California, said Kaven.

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Kaven—excited about the potential for these types of projects—said evaluating them involves weighing and then minimizing the risks, including those from climate change. “Are we willing to accept a few earthquakes in places that might be damaging—hopefully not deadly—but thereby reduce the risks to health and safety by having less emissions of greenhouse gasses?” he said. “That’s certainly something to consider.”

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For some residents, like Sanchez, the underground injection wells are less of a worry than the pipelines that would carry carbon dioxide to them.

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Federal regulations require pipelines carrying hazardous material to be located more than 50 feet from homes or gathering places. For CRC’s project, Kern County will require injection wells to be located more than 4,000 feet from facilities such as schools.

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In the wake of the Mississippi incident, the federal government has begun updating regulations for carbon dioxide carrying pipelines, a process that Kuprewicz expects will take years to complete. A 2022 California law prohibits the buildout of new pipelines until new rules are in place.

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Some environmental and community advocates also have deep misgivings about letting the fossil fuel industry—which has a strong financial interest in continuing oil extraction—lead efforts meant to combat climate change.

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But according to many experts, oil and gas companies are among those most suited to undertake such projects.

Steve Whittaker, a vice president at Vault 44.01, which develops carbon storage projects, said that building such facilities requires a sizable commitment. Companies have to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars and a lot of time to gather data for their permit applications. READ MORE