Utah lawmakers discuss carbon-storage demonstration project

SALT LAKE CITY — Utah lawmakers are taking an initial swipe at figuring out which state laws need to be in place related to hosting one of the nation's largest demonstration projects to capture and store carbon.

The $88 million project, most of which is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, will be located in the Price area and operated by Canada-based Thunderbird Energy Corp.

Although the capture of carbon from deep under the Earth has been done in various states, Utah's site near Gordon Creek on the Wasatch Plateau is one of only two large-scale test projects in the country.

Rep. Roger Barrus, R-Centerville and House chairman of the state Legislature's Natural Resource, Agriculture and Environment Interim committee, asked for a project presentation that was given Wednesday to committee members.

"What we are trying to educate the committee about is what carbon sequestration is and the political realities and liabilities," Barrus said.

"If it becomes a viable solution for the future ... we are going to have to deal with this as a Legislature."

Utah's subterranean topography of Mancos shale and other geologic deposits already hold vast amounts of carbon, which project leaders propose to retrieve from as deep as 10,000 feet below the Earth's surface.

The carbon would be brought up, measured, purified and reinjected through vertical drilling to about 8,400 feet.

Such capture and subsequent storage of 2,900 metric tons of liquid carbon dioxide poses issues of liability and questions about long-term stewardship of the area in its post-project years.

USTAR's Al Walker said the biggest concern is the migration of carbon dioxide — or seepage from the site, which would occupy a surface square mile.

Monitoring wells for the migration of the carbon dioxide would be in place in the area, which is largely uninhabited and about 15 miles west of Price.

Other states involved in carbon capture projects have pursued legislation on the question of liability, with Wyoming adopting a law earlier this year.

Barrus said as political pressures mount about greenhouse gases and global warming, industry is wise to look to ways to capture carbon from emissions and store it safely.

"There is that political reality we are going to have to deal with," he said. "Quite frankly, coal is going to be a very important energy resource producer in the future."

Delving into such a large-scale test demonstration project, Barrus said, is a classic question of what comes first: the chicken or the egg?

In this case, the state doesn't know the risks and how to address liabilities unless the research is done. The research, however, will reveal the risks and liabilities.

In the absence of federal legislation, individual states have looked to the establishment of some sort of trust fund, similar to what is done in other resource-extraction projects to ensure cleanup and proper mitigation.

John Baza, director of the Utah Division of Oil, Gas and Mining, said the division has been trying to craft rules that would contemplate regulatory controls over such a project, but that process is continuing to unfold.

It is an area, he added, where additional guidance from the Legislature is needed.

e-mail: amyjoi@desnews.com