DICIKINSON PRESS

Massive Midwest pipeline, a test for North Dakota's carbon capture goals, hits landowner snags

By Adam Willis
December 05, 2021 12:30 PM

“BEULAH, N.D. — In early September, AJ Blohm was moving cattle on her family farm in central North Dakota when a neighbor approached her with what sounded like a bizarre proposal. A company in Iowa was considering her property as part of the destination for tens of millions of tons of carbon dioxide, she soon learned. They could pay her to bury it forever thousands of feet below her land.

The project introduced by Blohm’s neighbor, who was working for the Iowa-based Summit Carbon Solutions, is the $4.5 billion Midwest Carbon Express. The 2,000 mile pipeline network aims to coalesce the carbon dioxide emissions from 31 ethanol plants in five states and ship it to North Dakota, where Summit is evaluating land in Oliver and Mercer counties to permanently bury the climate-warming gas. If it works, the Midwest Carbon Express would be the world’s largest carbon capture system, pulling in 12 million tons of carbon dioxide per year and increasing the annual volume stored globally today by 25%.

It could also present the first big test for a technology that North Dakota leaders have pitched as the future of the state's agriculture and energy sectors. The success of carbon capture is essential to Gov. Doug Burgum’s goal of achieving statewide carbon neutrality by 2030, a reach that the second-term Republican has said is attainable if the state can turn its porous geology into a vast carbon sink for the region.”