A petrochemical site in Corpus Christi. The state is opening up land along the Gulf coast to drill wells that could store carbon dioxide from industrial pollution.Texas has opened more than a million acres of offshore, state-owned waters for proposals from companies to inject greenhouse gas underground for permanent disposal as a means to mitigate climate change.
“It's largely on the back of government subsidies. In the long term, that’s not a sustainable solution,” McConnell said. “We’re going to spend a lot of money to reduce emissions, and we do not have a market construct in this country that supports it.” “The Railroad Commission having permitting authority over Class VI wells would unleash rapid widespread commercial development of in Texas, which is something the state is not prepared for,” said Virginia Palacios, director of Commission Shift, a Railroad Commission watchdog group.
“Given the variety of geologic settings in which storage will be applied, the Railroad Commission is in the best position to evaluate the specifics related to well depth, geology and hydrogeology,” Ramon said.that perforate the formation meant to contain carbon dioxide, said Susan Hovorka, a senior research scientist with the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas at Austin.
The Gulf Coast also stretches past some of the world’s most significant stationary greenhouse gas sources—the petrochemical and refinery complexes of Texas and Louisiana. That shortens the trip for captured gases to injection wells. Three years later, in 2022, Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which boosted tax credits for up to $85 per ton of carbon dioxide captured and injected underground. That legislation has allowed the sector to rapidly develop.