Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumYes, This Should Work Well - EPA Ready To Hand Texas Power To Authorize "Carbon Capture" Projects
WASHINGTON, June 9 (Reuters) - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Monday proposed approving Texas' application to oversee its own permitting for projects to inject carbon dioxide underground, a move long sought by that state's regulators and oil and gas companies with projects in the wings. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said Texas is best positioned to protect its drinking water from contamination while enabling lucrative CO2 injection projects, also known as carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects to mitigate climate change, to proceed.
Carbon injection will enable the permanent storage of CO2 emissions from power plants and industrial facilities deep underground, a way some companies seek to offset the emissions from their operations. (Ed. - sic)
"EPA is taking a key step to support cooperative federalism by proposing to approve Texas to permit Class VI [CO2 injection] wells in the state, Zeldin said in a statement.
The planned approval comes amid concerns by some landowners and environmental groups that pumping CO2 into the ground could harm their groundwater and exacerbate earthquakes and old oil-well blowouts already happening in the Permian Basin as Texas struggles to manage wastewater disposal, for which it already has oversight authority.
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Federal tax credits to incentivize carbon sequestration projects that were expanded under the former Biden administration's Inflation Reduction Act legislation have been left largely intact, even as House Republicans voted to gut or defang other similar subsidies for clean energy and electric vehicles. The Trump administration, Republicans and some oil companies, like Occidental (OXY.N), opens new tab, have maintained support for CCS technology, even as President Donald Trump has sought to roll back most regulations aimed at reducing CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions.
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https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/us-epa-proposes-giving-texas-authority-oversee-co2-injection-permits-2025-06-09/

SARose
(1,559 posts)Lets forever contaminate our groundwater and blow up the Permian Basin!
Yee haw!🤠
hatrack
(62,716 posts)
OKIsItJustMe
(21,294 posts)hatrack
(62,716 posts)It's just like Yellowstone, but with fewer trees and way more yucca plants.
It's salty and shitty enough that it can kill mesquite (and certainly cattle desperate enough to drink it). Not sure about its impact on Texans, though . . .
OKIsItJustMe
(21,294 posts)Shes buried in the middle of nowhere, in the upper reaches of Appalachia, and as I drove, I noticed an ugly scar on the summit of a hill. The verdant tree line had a great gap, bare stone staring down into the valley below. What happened there⁉️ I thought to myself. Then I realized, Oh, yeah, 'Fracking‼️
https://www.fractracker.org/2023/09/pennsylvania-watersheds-at-risk-drought-and-fracking/