By Mike Tony
Charleston Gazette-Mail
The West Virginia Senate has passed a bill designed to protect coal, oil and gas minerals from storage of carbon dioxide underground.
Senate Bill 15 would require that a carbon storage operator design a carbon sequestration project to isolate any existing or future production from a commercially valuable mineral, including a coal, oil or gas estate, from an underground carbon plume.
The bill comes amid West Virginia leaders’ pursuit of carbon capture, use and sequestration development.
SB 162 in 2023 allowed the Division of Natural Resources to lease state-owned pore spaces underlying state forests and wildlife management areas for sequestering carbon dioxide underground. Last year’s SB 627 extended that allowance to state park lands.
Unproven at commercial scale, carbon capture use and sequestration technology removes heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and uses it to create products or store it permanently underground to stave off impacts of warming in the atmosphere. Such technology retrofits commercial power plants to mitigate coal and gas asset emissions.
West Virginia set up a state regulatory program for carbon dioxide storage via the gas and oil industry-backed House Bill 4491 of 2022.
Environmental advocates have been wary of this string of legislation, viewing it as a risky commitment of the state’s natural resources.
SB 15, which now goes before the House of Delegates for its consideration, is similar to last year’s SB 899, which passed unanimously by the Senate before stalling in the House of Delegates.
SB 15 also passed the Senate without opposition Friday in a 32-0 vote.
The new bill would require that an underground carbon dioxide sequestration or storage permit applicant ensure that existing or future development of coal, oil or gas not be adversely impacted by a carbon sequestration or storage facility.
Under SB 15, the facility permit application would have to indicate whether the area within the proposed boundaries of the storage facility and area contiguous to the facility’s proposed boundaries of the storage facility “contains any commercially valuable mineral, including any coal or oil and gas estate or oil and gas storage field.”
A permit could be issued only if the state Department of Environmental Protection determines mineral owners and leaseholders and storage operators of the coal, gas or oil estate won’t be adversely affected.
The application would have to include evidence the applicant gave notice of the proposed carbon sequestration or storage facility to owners and leaseholders of pore space within the storage facility.
Those owners and leaseholders could object to the state regarding the design of the carbon sequestration or storage facility, and the applicant would have to address the objection to the DEP’s satisfaction before moving forward with the application process.
SB 15 is led in sponsorship by Senate Energy, Industry and Mining Committee Chair Chris Rose, R-Monongalia, a vocal supporter of and beneficiary of campaign contributions from the coal industry. SB 15 passed through Rose’s committee and on the Senate floor with almost no discussion.
Speaking last year as government affairs director at Pittsburgh-based EQT Corp., one of the nation’s largest gas producers, John Bane told the Energy, Industry and Mining Committee that 2025’s similar SB 899 was a “coal, oil, gas bill” that would guard against possible carbon capture issues “so we can focus on our base business, which is extracting natural resources.”
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