The North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources in June is set to hear permit applications for the underground carbon dioxide storage facilities that would serve as the final destination for Summit Carbon Solutions' planned multistate pipeline.
Summit's Midwest Carbon Express Pipeline would carry 18 million tons of climate-warming CO2 annually from 57 ethanol plants across North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska for permanent storage in western North Dakota. That is the equivalent of taking about 3.8 million gasoline-powered cars off the road every year, according to a calculator from the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
The two-day hearing June 11-12 in Bismarck will in part consider if the state Industrial Commission -- which oversees Mineral Resources -- can enforce a process called amalgamation where if the owners of 60% of the land making up a storage facility sign easement agreements, all landowners in the facility are required to join and are given "equitable" compensation in return.
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That practice is the subject of a lawsuit between the Northwest Landowners Association and the Industrial Commission. The three-member regulatory body is made up of the governor, attorney general and agricultural commissioner.
The pipeline still awaits regulatory approval in every state it would travel through. The second round of hearings for the North Dakota portion of Summit's route will begin next week in Mandan and is set to wrap up in early June, though hearings could go later since some lawyers for landowners and local governments intervening in the case are unable to attend. The state Public Service Commission initially denied the North Dakota route last summer, but later granted a reconsideration.
For more information on the Mineral Resources hearings go to: https://bit.ly/49GLSCK. For more information on the PSC hearings, go to https://bit.ly/3JnYXWW. Multiple aspects of one project can fall under different state agencies due to varying regulatory authority.