BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum is one of Donald Trump‘s most visible and vocal supporters, sprinting across the country to rally support for the former president’s comeback bid as he auditions to become his running mate.
Far from the fierce campaign trail, however, Burgum is wrestling with a massive carbon dioxide pipeline project in his home state. The $5.5 billion venture has divided North Dakota and left him in an uncomfortable political divide as Trump and president Joe Biden offer voters completely different views on how to deal with climate change.
Burgum, a Republican little known outside North Dakota, is a serious contender to become Trump’s vice presidential pick. The two-term governor stood out in a shrinking field of choices because of his administrative experience and business acumen. And Burgum has close ties to deep-pocketed energy industry CEOs whose money Trump wants to help finance his third run for the White House.
Burgum favors the pipeline project, which would collect planet-warming CO2 from ethanol plants in the Midwest and deposit the gas a mile underground. The pipeline is in line with Biden’s push to tackle global climate change, a position that could bring him into conflict with Trump.
In supporting the pipeline, Burgum is navigating the thorny issue of land ownership in deep-red North Dakota and the politics of climate change within the Republican Party.
While Burgum has outlined plans to make North Dakota carbon neutral by 2030, he has steered clear of describing the pipeline or other carbon capture initiatives as environmentally friendly. Instead, he’s touting them as a lucrative business opportunity for North Dakota that could ultimately help the fossil fuel industry.
“This has nothing to do with climate change,” Burgum said on a radio program in North Dakota in early March. “This has to do with markets.”
The pipeline
The carbon pipeline, known as the Midwest Carbon Express, is funded by hundreds of investors and will be built by Summit Carbon Solutions of Ames, Iowa. The 2,500-mile pipeline route winds through Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska and South Dakota before ending in west-central North Dakota, where up to 18 million tons of CO2 are buried annually in underground rock formations.
The North Dakota Industrial Commission, which Burgum chairs, is expected to decide in the coming months whether to approve Summit’s application for a permit to store all of the CO2 it collects. Regulators in nearby states are also considering approving the pipeline.
As part of Biden’s investment in the fight against climate change, companies can receive $85 from the federal government for every ton of CO2 collected from industrial facilities and permanently stored. They can also get $60 for every ton that is stored and later used to produce more oil, a process that involves injecting carbon dioxide into oil fields to keep them productive.
Summit will receive as much as $1.5 billion annually from the tax credits. The company said it has no plans to use CO2 in oil drilling, known as Enhanced Oil Recovery or EOR. But an application for a carbon dioxide storage permit prepared by Summit appears to leave open the possibility of the CO2 being used for that purpose.
“Our business model is 100% sequestration,” the company said in an emailed response to questions. “No customer has ever approached us to move their CO2 for EOR.”
For several environmental and public interest groups, providing tax credits for even more climate-polluting oil is a handout to oil drillers that undermines the goal of weaning businesses and consumers from fossil fuels.
“It’s just not the right answer,” said Brett Hartl, director of government affairs at the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity. “You are encouraging the expansion of fossil fuel use for many years or decades to come.”
Burgum’s office declined a request to interview the governor for this story. He has praised his state’s underground CO2 storage capacity as a “geological jackpot.” North Dakota has the capacity to store 250 billion tons of carbon dioxide underground, according to Burgum.
This message has been reinforced by the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources, which estimates that CO2 could help extract billions of additional barrels of oil from the rich Bakken shale formation. The Bakken is a 200,000 square kilometer deposit spanning North Dakota, Montana and southern Canada.
Pipeline backlash
In North Dakota, the backlash against the Summit project was intense, with Burgum caught in the crossfire.
There are fears that a pipeline rupture would release a deadly cloud of CO2. In 2020, a compressed carbon dioxide pipeline ruptured in Satartia, Mississippi. At least 45 people required hospital treatment and another 200 had to be evacuated from the area, the federal agency that oversees pipeline safety said.
Summit said the CO2 pipeline in Mississippi may contain large amounts of hydrogen sulfide, a toxic gas. The system will transport nearly pure carbon dioxide, the company said, and any hydrogen sulfide or other elements in the stream “will not be considered impactful.”
Landowners also worry that their property values will drop if the pipeline passes under their property. And they are outraged by what they say are heavy-handed tactics Summit is using to secure easements for the project.
Burgum has largely avoided the tricky subject of eminent domain. If landowners don’t want the pipeline on their property, the route can be rerouted, he says, and someone else can get the “big check.”
Julia Stramer, whose family owns farmland in Emmons County and opposes the pipeline, said the amount Summit offered her for a 99-year easement was insulting.
“I informed Governor Burgum that we have not received an offer for ‘the big check,’” she told North Dakota’s Public Service Commission earlier this month.
Stramer scoffed at the safety measures Summit says it is taking, telling the committee that the pipeline would be buried only four feet deep.
“We bury people deeper than that,” Stramer said.
Kurt Swenson and his family own or have an interest in 1,750 acres at or near the proposed carbon storage site. At a public hearing earlier this month on Summit’s storage permit application, Swenson said he had a warning for anyone who tries to take his land without his permission.
“It seems like everyone wants what’s not theirs,” Swenson said. “Eventually you will take it from my cold, dead hands. And you’ll see how that works out for you.”
Summit said it has entered into easement agreements with landowners along 82% of the pipeline’s route in North Dakota and has secured 92% of the leases needed at the storage site. The company added that the project is also supported by state lawmakers and emergency managers.
Concerns about Summit’s project in Burleigh, North Dakota’s second-most populous county, led the county commission to approve an ordinance banning the pipeline from running too close to residential areas, churches and schools.
“I have not received any contact from anyone not affiliated with Summit asking them to support this pipeline,” said Brian Bitner, chairman of the Burleigh County Commission. “Every contact has asked me to oppose it.”
Gaylen Dewing, who has worked as a farmer and rancher near Bismarck for more than 50 years, criticized Burgum for what he sees as the governor’s tilt toward the left. Burgum’s embrace of carbon neutrality has put the governor in cahoots with the “Green New Deal people,” he said.
“Although he professes to be conservative, he is anything but when it comes to environmental issues,” Dewing said.
Not a climate warrior
When he’s out to get Trump, Burgum doesn’t sound like a climate warrior at all.
Speaking at the Republican Party Convention in North Carolina last month, Burgum accused the Biden administration of trying to shut down the oil and gas industry and declared that Trump would roll back federal rules and mandates that he said are stifling energy companies.
Trump has long criticized federal and state efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and was supported by the oil and gas industry in his three presidential bids. The former president, who has called global warming a “hoax” in the past, claims on his campaign website that Biden has surrendered to the “crazy climate crusaders.”
Oil and gas interests have already donated nearly $8 million to Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, according to political money website Open Secrets.
Burgum, with his close ties to his state’s dominant industry, is the type of running mate who could help boost such donations.
If Burgum is not selected as the Republican Party’s vice presidential candidate and does not take a job in a second Trump administration, he could always return to North Dakota to finish out his final term with important decisions looming.
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Lardner reported from Washington.
