Underground Leak at U.S. CCS Well Could Bode Badly for Northern Alberta

An 8,000-tonne liquid carbon leak at the United States’ first commercial site for underground carbon dioxide storage is setting off alarm bells for more than 100 other projects that might use similar materials.

The leak at a sequestration well below Lake Decatur in Illinois, operated by agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland, was likely caused by corrosion in the steel that was used to build the storage well, Politico PRO reports. As a result, adds Politico’s Power Switch newsletter, more than 150 environmental groups are asking for a pause on carbon sequestration activities, while the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reassesses more than 100 pending permit applications.

“The risks associated with carbon capture and storage… are too great to ignore,” the groups told the EPA, in a letter this week that calls for tougher oversight and more rigorous permitting.

“The steel, 13 Chrome, has been used for decades in oil and gas wells, but it appears to be vulnerable to corrosion when exposed to the liquids in carbon sequestration wells,” PRO explains. “Using an alternate material would likely be more expensive and could delay many of the projects that the agricultural and energy industries are hoping to deploy to access federal tax credits and address the pollution driving climate change.”

While its review is under way, Power Switch says, the EPA is “requiring companies to either switch to a more corrosion-resistant material — which would likely be more expensive — or justify their use of 13 Chrome with rigorous technical analyses specific to the site — which also isn’t cheap.”

But local water resources and public health are at risk when CCS wells leak. “That’s because pressurized CO2 stored underground can escape or propel brine trapped in the saline reservoirs typically used for permanent storage,” Grist explains. “The leaks can lead to heavy metal contamination and potentially lower pH levels, all of which can make drinking water undrinkable. This is what bothers critics of carbon capture, who worry that it’s solving one problem by creating another.”

“Just because CO2 sequestration can be done doesn’t mean it should be done,” retired elementary schoolteacher Verlyn Rosenberger, 88, told Decatur City Council in mid-October, after testing revealed a second leak at the Lake Decatur facility. “Pipes eventually leak.”

Officials Kept in the Dark

Jessie Stolark, executive director of the U.S. Carbon Capture Coalition, told Politico that curtailing CO2 injections into saline aquifers or suspending permit reviews “would penalize an industry that is complying with federal regulations.” She added that the fact the original leak was detected and addressed “shows that the regulatory regime over carbon storage is working as intended.”

But Grist says ADM “kept local and state officials in the dark for months about the first leak. They detected it back in March, five months after discovering corrosion in the tubing in the sequestration well.” Local stakeholders told Grist the company also held the information back during negotiations on state CCS regulations in April and May.

“As a result, when Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker signed those CCS regulations into law at ADM’s Decatur facility in July, he was unaware of the leak that had occurred more than 5,000 feet below his seat, his office confirmed.” In the end, the public learned what was going on when Politico and E&E News reported the story in September.

“I thought we were negotiating in good faith with ADM,” the bill’s sponsor, state Sen. Laura Fine (D), said in a statement. “When negotiating complex legislation, we expect all parties to be forthcoming and transparent in order to ensure we enact effective legislation.”

It isn’t clear that any disclosure was legally required, and the EPA said the two leaks pose “no threat to water sources,” Grist writes. “Still, they raise concern about whether more leaks are likely, whether the public has any right to know when leaks occur, and if CCS technology is really a viable climate solution.”

‘Ramming it Down Our Throat’

Politico says it’s unclear how many of the pending CCS applications in the U.S. use 13 Chrome steel, though industry experts said a large percentage of them likely do. And the same question may come up soon enough in Northern Alberta, where representatives of the 3,000-member Cold Lake First Nations say the Pathways Alliance, the lobby group that represents Canada’s biggest oil sands producers, is failing to consult on its own plans for a massive CCS network.

“It just seems like they’re ramming it down our throat,” Chief Kelsey Jacko told an industry conference last month. “We’re asking questions and they’re not being answered.”

Pathways has not yet applied for regulatory approval for its proposed CCS complex, DeSmog wrote at the time. The plan was to transport captured CO2 from 20 different oil sands production facilities along a 400-kilometre pipeline network to Cold Lake, where the waste product would be stored.

Despite the community’s best efforts to find out more about the project, Economic Development Officer Heather Bishop said there was very little information on offer. “We don’t know the full delineation of the project,” she said at the time. “We received an initial consultation package very recently, just last week. They reached out, but no detailed information until last week.”

Pathways “has been running a nationwide media blitz over the past few months touting the Cold Lake project as a key part of oil producers’ plan to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050,” DeSmog writes. The ads are now under review by the federal Competition Bureau after a complaint from Greenpeace Canada, and Bishop told DeSmog the community had asked the lobby group to stop the campaign.

“What you see in the media is about the same level of detail we’ve received, up until last week,” she said.

Jacko told DeSmog a total of eight tribal chiefs shared his perspective on the lack of information. “We stand united together; we’re voicing the same concern,” he said.

Pathways President Kendall Dilling told CBC the companies were consulting with 25 Indigenous communities across the project footprint in Northeastern Alberta. But “Jacko said his community has been burned by resource extraction projects before, which have left the region with tailings pond issues and a diminished caribou population,” the national broadcaster writes. “He believes the carbon capture and storage project will be more of the same.”

“It’s frustrating because that’s a 400-kilometre line, and [leakage] could happen [along] the pipeline or it could happen right at the storage [area],” he said.

“I want my children and my grandchildren and their children to have a beautiful place to live, a safe place to live,” agreed Cold Lake First Nations council member Jacinta Janvier. “I think people need to really think about what can happen and the consequences.”