Why oil and gas companies want state oversight for carbon dioxide injection

Florian Martin/Houston Public Media

ODESSA — Texas oil companies and regulators have waited years for federal permits that would allow those companies to suck carbon dioxide — the largest contributor to climate change — from the atmosphere and inject it underground.

After sweeping environmental reviews and public hearings, the Environmental Protection Agency has yet to approve any of those 17 proposals.

Occidental Petroleum Corporation, a Houston-based energy company that introduced one of the most ambitious projects, reached the stage where the public can testify for or against the proposal — one of the last steps before final review.

The delay has prompted more calls from the oil and gas industry to transfer the authority — known as primacy — to grant permits to inject carbon from the air into the ground.

If granted, primacy would give the Texas Railroad Commission, the state agency regulating oil and gas, the ability to review, approve, or deny permits companies need to inject carbon dioxide underground without federal input.

“We want to regulate our own state business,” said Katie Zimmerman, decarbonization director at Wood, an energy consulting firm in Houston. “The EPA has a lot of permits, and they don’t have enough people with the right experience to be able to process the request as quickly as we would like to see these projects get off the ground.”

Environmental group leaders have also expressed concerns about the adequacy of regulatory oversight for carbon dioxide injection projects in Texas. The commission already manages wastewater injections. In the worst cases, unplugged wells have contributed to seismic activity, sinkholes and leaks or blowouts from unplugged wells.

Erandi Treviño, a longtime environmentalist who co-founded the nonprofit Raices Collab Project, said the commission must prove it can regulate such permits effectively.

“All these projects would come with large investments in infrastructure, large investments in projects. It’s adding to a responsibility list of the Texas Railroad Commission that they haven’t exactly proven to be capable of (handling),” Treviño said. “We don’t have trust in the agency to do that role.”

The commission applied in December 2022. The EPA is still in the first of four phases of the review. Other states have received the authorization: North Dakota in 2018, Wyoming in 2020, Louisiana in 2024 and West Virginia in 2025.

“The RRC is more than capable of effectively regulating Class VI wells. We have a decades-long history of regulating various classes of injection wells, of which carbon capture wells would be part of,” said a commission spokesperson, referring to the permit type. “The RRC has a team of geologists and engineers to handle the duties and responsibilities for Class VI program applications and monitoring; it’s a team with roles in technical…