Siting Carbon Dioxide Pipelines

More than 5,000 miles of high-pressure pipelines carrying carbon dioxide (“CO2”) traverse the western and southern United States primarily connecting natural and anthropogenic sources of CO2 sources to mature oilfields for CO2 enhanced oil recovery (“CO2-EOR”). The precise route of the pipelines may be impacted by a variety of factors under both state and federal law. Like oil pipelines and electric transmission lines, developers of CO2 pipelines site infrastructure according to state law. Accordingly, state law determines whether, and under which circumstances, CO2 pipelines may utilize eminent domain authority to acquire property along the pipeline route. States principally provide pipelines with this authority under two public interest justifications: the development of natural resources, or, constructing and making available public access infrastructure through the imposition of common carrier requirements.This paper analyzes the adequacy of the current regulatory framework for siting CO2 pipelines with a goal towards building a CO2 pipeline network that is flexible enough to serve both CO2-EOR and CCUS purposes.