Not A Southern Tier Solution

By Carmi Orenstein, Editor, the Networker, and Program Director, Concerned Health Professionals of New York
And Sandra Steingraber, Senior Scientist

Here at SEHN, we often feel that we are going to battle with zombies. Or, more specifically, with the endless machinations of the fossil fuel industry to keep their zombie industry alive and deeply entrenched within our economy. 

Fifteen years ago, when it seemed that peak oil and gas might finally be at hand, the industry bet big on fracking. This extraction technique uses high-pressure streams of water, chemicals, and sand to blow up layers of shale and extract the tiny bubbles of gas or oil trapped inside—as opposed to simply sucking up the pools of oil or gas trapped between the rock layers, which is what old-school drilling had gone after.  

At the time, fracking was marketed as a climate change solution—a bridge to a renewable energy future—but we now understand that it merely extended the lifespan of oil and gas extraction and set in motion a disastrous rise in methane emissions. 

More recently, the oil and gas industry got behind carbon capture and storage (CCS), which uses taxpayer dollars to capture carbon dioxide (CO2) from smokestacks of various kinds, liquefy it, and pump it through special pipelines for burial. Most often, that burial ground is a depleted oil well, in which case the captured CO2 injected into it serves the purpose of pushing more oil out of it. The name of this zombie is enhanced oil recovery (EOR). Like fracking, it is also marketed—with a lot of handwaving—as a solution to the climate crisis. As we have demonstrated, it’s not. 

Now, in New York State, the two zombies have teamed up to form a new monster: fracking with captured CO2. Currently in the proposal stage, CO2 fracking claims it can save the climate by using captured CO2 instead of water to force methane out of the shale for burning in gas-fired power plants. This plan represents a brazen attempt to do two things at once: make an end-run around New York’s statewide fracking ban, which prohibits high-volume hydraulic fracturing, AND collect public funds for burying CO2 in places where no evidence guarantees it will stay put. 

Southern Tier CO2 to Clean Energy Solutions, LLC (Southern Tier Solutions, or STS) is the Texas-based company making this proposal. In its promotional materials, STS boasts that New York State is merely the pilot project for a much bigger roll-out. “Together, we shall develop and deliver the blueprint to this nation and the free world.” In other words, the stakes are high, the issue is more than local, and this same flimflammer may well show up soon in your own community. 

Let’s take a deeper look at this plan. 

The first step of an “epic journey” 

From Southern Tier Solution’s FAQ website page:

Assembling the required oil, gas, and subsurface pore space leases is only the first step on this epic journey. We intend to directionally drill horizontal wells and produce natural gas from the Marcellus and Utica shales using carbon dioxide as a replacement for water in the well drilling and stimulation process. 

And why would a newly-formed Texas-based company attempt to come into New York State and challenge its fracking ban—as well as its comprehensive climate legislation, the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act? Why would it offer up a complex scheme composed of multiple experimental technologies, promising landowners “a sustainable and prosperous future”? 

Again, from Southern Tier Solution’s own FAQ:

Q. What are a few of the … regulatory policy changes that make this project possible?

A. The Federal government's passage of the Inflation Reduction Act in August 2022, inclusive of the revisions to the 45Q tax credit code

In other words, we can understand this proposed journey as a way for the fossil fuel industry to extract shale gas from the very region of the nation that has decided to leave it in ground and also as a way to bring New York State into the fossil fuel industry’s CCS mania by taking advantage of the available federal tax credits, including the Section 45Q Tax Credit for Carbon Sequestration. 

Our allies in Louisiana have said that CCS “snuck in the back door.” Allowing landowners to extract shale gas from their private properties while collecting tax credits for burying pollution appears to be the back door that industry is looking for to bring CCS to New York State.  Note that STS is enthusiastically seeking the partnership of landowners to embrace its “epic journey.” To that end, New York landowners in the Southern Tier are being offered a flat $10 to sign. “Your lease is your vote, your ballot to cast that says I am for this opportunity, and my lease publicly expresses my support for this opportunity.” To enable this project, STS requires tens of thousands of landowners and hundreds of thousands of acres. State permits, for which no applications have yet been submitted, are also needed.

Exactly who is Texas-based Southern Tier Solutions welcoming to New York’s Southern Tier? And what will this landscape look like if its plan goes through?

STS’s proposal would create, from scratch, a dozen or more “production hubs.” Each of these would include gas wells using liquefied CO2 to mobilize and extract natural gas, gas pipelines and collection equipment, a new type of gas-fired power plant (“Allam Cycle”), and direct air capture (DAC) units. In other words, once the hubs are up and running, a CO2 pollution stream will be used to frack more methane out of the shale to feed the power plants. How the initially needed CO2 waste will arrive—high pressure pipelines? rail? trucks?— is unclear. 

STS foresees some areas of potential opposition and attempts to allay them. For example, STS appears aware that threats to drinking water played a large role in public resistance to hydraulic fracking in New York State a decade ago. Slyly, STS acknowledges the truth of these concerns by claiming that its method protects water resources and encouraging regulatory agencies to catch up with STS thinking: “Governing bodies on the State, Federal, and international levels will demand the shift [to CO2] once they recognize the benefits of preserving their valuable freshwater supplies…” And yet, further down in the fine print and as an aside, STS concedes that the drilling process requires fresh water, as will its cementing operations.

SEHN’S critique 

The vision put forward by Southern Tier Solutions solves nothing, is rife with greenwashing, and is without recognition of the additional risks their plan would create. 

First, it’s clear that the frackers are back, with a variation on the theme. Together with an impromptu coalition that has formed in response to the proposal, SEHN is saying NO to the clear attempt to circumvent New York’s historic 2014 fracking ban. There is no evidence to demonstrate that the many risks and harms of horizontal directional drilling into the shale are removed by substituting CO2 for water. In fact, new risks are introduced. One of them arises from the fact that CO2 turns into carbonic acid when it mixes with water. The company asserts that it will employ a special process called “borehole vertical seismic profiling” to detect and avoid migration pathways that would allow CO2 to contact and acidify groundwater. Landowners and the New York Department of Environmental Conservation should be disinclined to take that risk. We know from an extensive body of research documented in the fracking science Compendium by Concerned Health Professionals of New York (CHPNY) that the subterranean geological world does not consist of layers of inert, unbreachable containers, especially when fluids are forced into them under high pressure. We know that the act of drilling itself creates vertical migratory pathways that open connections between groundwater aquifers and deeper geological strata, and we know that cement well casings will, invariably, corrode, crack, leak, and fail over time. 

In addition, shale basins tend to have high radon concentrations due to the decay of naturally occurring uranium. New York’s Marcellus Shale is no exception. Radioactive materials can easily be mobilized when shale layers are forced to give up their methane gas. Indeed, as the Compendium documents, some studies show rising radon levels in homes located in fracked regions. Radioactivity may also contaminate downstream pipelines and equipment, and radioactive particles can pour of out of wellheads and drift in the air. These problems are not solved by swapping out water and subbing in CO2 as the agent of fracking. 

We have also shown that fracking harms agriculture, contributes to soil erosion, fragments forests, decimates wildlife and bird populations, and industrializes rural communities. And because the STS production hubs require land-clearing and construction for its many elements beyond drilling, the land impacts are even more extensive than with old-school fracking—even with electric trucks and drilling equipment. 

Second, it’s clear that CCS is the tail that wags the fracking dog. Our work with SEHN and the nationwide CCS coalition we convene have enabled us see how this proposal is one piece of the CCS frenzy that has fossil fuel companies and their allies in the federal government scrambling for access to public lands, such as the proposal to store waste CO2 in our National Forests, or private lands, such as is the case here. Our own research and expertise combined with that of our coalition partners has brought to light an alarming suite of risks and harms that accompanies existing CCS activity, and the potential for much more widespread exposure to these problems. 

The CCS boom that the industry hopes for would add tens of thousands of miles of CO2 pipelines to the existing 5,000 in the United States. It is not clear how many miles the STS project would add, or what their configuration would be. The United States has already experienced one rupture of such a pipeline, harming 45 people—many still ill to this day—who had no warning of this potential for disaster in their community. CO2 is an asphyxiant and a toxicant, causing a variety of health effects (all the way to death) depending on the concentration in air. The emergency responders facing the disaster in Satartia, Mississippi did not know what was happening as “people lay on the ground, shaking and unable to breathe.” The Pipelines and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) does not yet have regulations for CO2 pipelines and is known to be understaffed and underfunded. There are as of now no active CCS projects or pipelines in New York state. Who or what would be in place to protect households and communities in proximity to CO2 transport from its risks? 

Third, it’s clear that the STS proposal will turn New York’s Southern Tier into an experimental laboratory for untested ideas based on unproven assumptions. The fate of sequestering carbon waste underground is far from a settled science. And yet, long-term monitoring for ensuring the stored CO2 stays underground is not required for companies claiming the 45Q tax credits. STS says (emphasis added), 

To store carbon dioxide indefinitely, it must be injected and stored in a reservoir capable of trapping or sealing the gas for thousands of years. Shale reservoirs have not intentionally been used for carbon sequestration, but they exhibit the ability to trap gaseous substances for millions of years. The evidence is clear; if productive shale reservoirs could not trap or seal gas within the formation, they would not be suitable targets for producing natural gas. The gas would have already migrated out over geologic time. The Marcellus shale has the proven ability to trap gas for millions of years. Research and technical studies have confirmed the suitability of the Marcellus shale for carbon sequestration. [No references.]

No evidence exists for the claim that pressurized CO2 molecules will eternally remain in shale layers that have been drilled into and broken apart to release methane molecules. Indeed, the data show much uncertainly about channels for and amounts of leakage of underground storage of CO2. As one NGO put it, CCS is putting a lot of eggs into a potentially leaky basket. Will leaseholders hear about the unknowns of this experiment to take place under their land and the possible harms they or their heirs will be exposed to? 

Knowing enough to say no

Even as we continue to analyze this proposal, we are not waiting to oppose it within the newly formed state coalition. (See Sandra Steingraber’s accompanying column). We are confident that the knowledge base we already have amassed allows us to understand the critical pieces of this project and say unequivocally that CO2 fracking is just another—and perhaps even more dangerous—version of fracking, which we have already rejected as an initiative (CHPNY) and a state (New York). CO2 fracking is part of the dangerous, industry-driven complex of false climate solutions marching under the banner of carbon capture and storage, with its rush for public money in the form of 45Q tax credits. We can say that its greenwashed presentation to landowners is disingenuous and cannot substitute for a just energy transition, a fossil fuel phaseout, and a sound climate policy that incentivizes truly safe and proven sustainable energy technologies.