A Texas energy regulator is publicly slamming carbon injection plans, challenging the oil and gas industry over a technology designed to curb climate-warming emissions.
Wayne Christian, one of three elected Republicans at the state Railroad Commission, disagreed with a recent staff decision to grant a state permit for a major Texas carbon removal and storage project.
He called the proposal “a danger” during a public meeting last week, questioning how much it was studied. And he tied government incentives for carbon projects to global emissions efforts and a Biden-era climate law. Christian is one of a growing number of Republican voices pushing back on carbon capture and storage while typically supporting oil and gas initiatives.
“We’re sitting here allowing a spending of taxpayer dollars — not private corporations, not industry — we’re talking about my grandkids’ money,” Christian said. “And we find the Railroad Commission of Texas agreeing with the United Nations, the World Economic Forum, and others like that rather than what’s pro-oil and gas.”
EPA recently approved Texas’ request for top regulatory authority over Class VI wells used to inject carbon dioxide underground for long-term geologic storage. As of Nov. 7, applications for Class VI wells in Texas made up 24 percent of all Class VI permits pending at EPA, an online tracker shows.
Carbon well approvals will shift solely to Texas in mid-December, while the recent state permit approval also involved Class VI permits for an Occidental project in the state’s Ector County. A broader debate, meanwhile, is unfolding across the country.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called carbon sequestration “a scam” in a video posted to Facebook in March, blasting Republican lawmakers in the state for using the party’s supermajority to advance carbon sequestration legislation.
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry issued an executive order in October instituting a moratorium on new applications for Class VI permits, citing a need to “put into place a well-thought-out and methodical approach to application review and permitting.”
And Alabama GOP state Rep. Matthew Hammett has prefiled a bill that would prevent “persons from injecting and storing” CO2 and nonhazardous fluids in underground wells in Covington County, in the southern part of the state.
That came after a company submitted a Class VI permit application to EPA in July for a sequestration hub, according to an EPA tracker. In a statement last week, Jeff Emerson — a spokesperson for project developer Reliant — said the Pine Hills storage hub will “operate under the strictest federal safety standards” set by EPA’s underground injection control program.
The White House referred POLITICO’s E&E News to EPA regarding questions about Christian’s recent comments about carbon capture and storage, or CCS.
EPA press secretary Brigit Hirsch said the agency welcomes Christian’s support for President Donald Trump’s energy dominance agenda and “our mutual interest in empowering Texas to protect its underground sources of drinking water while advancing economic growth and energy dominance.”
Texas has its own Class VI regulations that require applications to get state permits for Class VI wells on top of Class VI permits from EPA, Hirsch said.
“Once primacy becomes effective on December 15, 2025, [Railroad Commission] permits will be the sole governing permits for all projects in Texas,” Hirsch said.
Growing Republican concerns over safety related to carbon injection wells put officials in line with environmental groups they often spar with over oil and gas issues.
Groups like the Center for International Environmental Law, the Center for Biological Diversity and Commission Shift — a nonprofit watchdog group that advocates for changes to the Railroad Commission — have all expressed safety concerns that mirrored some of Christian’s comments.
Worries include potential CO2 pipeline leaks and underground pressure issues in areas that have already seen seismic activity tied to fracking wastewater injections.
“It’s a sign of the strange political moment that we’re in, where a Republican regulator would attack carbon capture as an unproven technology,” Andrew Logan, a senior director at sustainability nonprofit Ceres, said Wednesday. “Some of what [Christian] said could have come from the mouths of climate activists who also would raise concerns around safety or efficacy.”
‘Another milestone’
Following the passage of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act — the climate law signed by former President Joe Biden — and its expansion of the 45Q tax credit, geologic storage became more attractive to developers or carbon capture and removal projects. But the Republican megalaw signed by Trump this year established equal incentive levels.
The CCS industry is also navigating federal award cancellations under Trump and the potential end of a federal program that requires large industrial facilities to disclose their emissions. Repealing the EPA program would upend how companies claim the 45Q credit for permanent geologic storage, and developers rely on the incentive to make carbon capture projects economically viable.
In approving so-called Class VI primacy for Texas, EPA responded to members of the public who broached safety concerns, writing that Texas’ regulations are “as stringent” as the federal standards and that injection of CO2 into the ground can be conducted safely.
More than two decades of “demonstrated research and operations have enabled [carbon capture, use and storage] to be deemed a technology that is technically and commercially demonstrated by the EPA and made ready for numerous states to accept the responsibility to diligently and effectively progress permits,” Charles McConnell, executive director of the Center for Carbon Management in Energy at the University of Houston, said in an email.
Still, two weeks before the EPA granted Texas primacy, Christian released a statement calling for Class VI permits to go before the Railroad Commission’s three elected officials for a vote. Class VI permits now are approved or denied by staff administratively.
The Railroad Commission responded to public comments regarding Occidental’s permit, noting that five of six people spoke in favor of a draft permit.
Aaron Krejci, director of public affairs for Railroad Commission Chair Jim Wright, said in a statement that no one filed a protest about the Occidental permit, so there was no issue that would require a public vote by commissioners. He said requiring a vote on unprotested matters “would be adding an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy to the process.”
“Chairman Wright does not feel it is within his right, or the powers bestowed upon him by the citizens of Texas, to state blanket opposition to permits within the delegated authority of the Railroad Commission based on his personal views regarding the efficacy of certain federal tax provisions,” Krejci wrote.
Occidental has also defended its carbon storage plans.
“We were pleased the Railroad Commission of Texas granted us a permit for geologic storage and carbon dioxide injection supporting our STRATOS Direct Air Capture facility,” Occidental CEO Vicki Hollub, said in a statement, describing the permit approval from the commission as “another milestone.”
Kenneth Dillon, a senior vice president at Occidental, said during the company’s recent earnings call that CO2 injection tied to the project is expected to begin in the first quarter of 2026.
In April, EPA Region 6 issued three Class VI permits to Occidental, saying at the time that although “the injection of carbon dioxide is relatively new, the technologies employed are well established, and the science and engineering are proven.”
States are allowed to require permits in addition to EPA Class VI well permits, according to the Great Plains Institute, a Minnesota-based nonprofit that supports deployment of carbon capture technologies.
“Texas can harness carbon management to attract investment, create jobs, and maintain its global leadership in energy,” Patrice Lahlum, vice president of industrial innovation and carbon management at the institute, said in a statement.
Relying on CO2 projects
Bryce Dubee, a spokesperson for the Railroad Commission, said the agency has had a transition meeting with EPA regarding primacy.
“The [Railroad Commission] has been processing applications in parallel with our federal counterparts and going forward we will continue to process these applications,” Dubee said.
When Trump signed the Republican megalaw in July, he increased the credit levels under 45Q for CO2 embedded into products or stored through enhanced oil recovery, where the gas is used to produce oil.
“The future of the Permian Basin and US energy security is going to rely on carbon dioxide from direct air capture facilities for enhanced oil recovery,” said Occidental’s Hollub.
Class II wells are used for enhanced oil recovery. Some developers may avoid carbon projects tied to boosting oil production because the economics are affected by fluctuations in the price of crude. Supporters say that using CO2 in the oil patch produces crude while generating fewer carbon emissions per barrel.
“This is a game-changing technology that will help us overcome the looming peak in Permian production and ensure job security for thousands of energy industry workers in Texas,” Hollub said of direct air capture, which pulls CO2 from the atmosphere and can be used to bolster oil production.
The Trump administration’s support for 45Q dovetails with its energy goals, even if cutting emissions via CCS doesn’t align with its climate policies, observers told E&E News this year.
Some Republicans and environmental groups have criticized the tax credit, which can be used for CO2 storage in saline or other geologic formations.
Earlier this year, Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) teamed up with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) in an unsuccessful attempt to repeal 45Q. At the time, Perry — whose district includes the capital Harrisburg — said 45Q “subsidizes technologies that serve no purpose beyond distorting energy markets.”
In September, EPA issued a proposed rule that would end the greenhouse gas reporting program — which collects annual emissions data from thousands of large industrial facilities across the country.
In a filing this month to EPA, the American Petroleum Institute trade group said data from the program serves as the foundation for claiming 45Q.
‘That contradiction’
On Wednesday, Texas Oil & Gas Association President Todd Staples applauded the Trump administration’s decision to grant Class VI primacy to Texas and said the state Railroad Commission has “been permitting the injection of CO2 for decades,” referring to permits for enhanced oil recovery.
“Texas landowners will benefit from payments to permanently sequester CO2 in previously unused and untapped pore space,” Staples said in a statement. “All Texans will win from the investment and jobs that result as the CCS industry grows to respond to companies whose business plans include permanent sequestration of CO2.”
Critics, however, say the 45Q program is vulnerable to potential abuse.
Virginia Palacios, executive director of Commission Shift, pointed to a 2020 Treasury Department investigation that found some of the companies claiming the largest 45Q tax credits did not fulfill EPA requirements for the credits.
Treasury officials found that about $894 million of tax credits awarded to the 10 largest claimants from 2010 to 2019 stemmed from reporting that was not in compliance with EPA rules.
“We can’t continue to have a program operate this way,” Palacios said. “We agree with Commissioner Christian on those concerns and are glad he heard his constituents and is now speaking out against it.”
But the Carbon Capture Coalition — a consortium of companies, labor unions and environmental policy groups that back CCS — has said the investigation shows the federal system works, according to a past document prepared by the group.
“If taxpayers don’t demonstrate secure geologic storage or permanent displacement of the captured CO2 through utilization, they won’t get the credit,” the group said.
Christian of the Texas Railroad Commisssion said the idea of sequestering carbon to fight climate change is a moot point during the Trump administration.
Trump called climate change a “con job” at a United Nations speech in September, and EPA this year took steps to kill the endangerment finding — an Obama-era justification for regulating tailpipe emissions by arguing that carbon dioxide from motor vehicles was a public health threat and could be regulated under the Clean Air Act.
“If the EPA is truly reevaluating whether CO2 is even harmful, then why is it simultaneously greenlighting massive carbon capture projects built around the premise that CO2 must be eradicated to meet arbitrary Net Zero goals?” Christian said in an October statement. “That contradiction undermines both scientific credibility and regulatory consistency.”
