Navigator withdraws Illinois application for its five-state carbon pipeline

A company that wants to build a carbon pipeline stretching across the Midwest said on Tuesday it was withdrawing its application for the Illinois portion of the 1,350-mile project. In the past month, South Dakota utility regulators rejected Navigator CO2’s request for a pipeline permit in their state, and the company asked Iowa regulators to suspend action on its application there.

Navigator’s Heartland Greenway is among three proposed pipelines in the Midwest that would capture carbon dioxide, mostly from ethanol plants, and transport it through pipelines for injection hundreds of feet below ground. Navigator’s injection site would be in central Illinois. Summit Carbon Solutions and Wolf Carbon Solutions are the other projects.

“Heartland Greenway can boost the Midwest economy by incorporating carbon capture as part of corn and ethanol processing,” says Navigator. “The result is renewable fuels, a value-added price on corn, and allows the Midwest to reap the economic advantages.”

Opponents, such as the Coalition to Stop CO2 Pipelines, say the high-pressure pipelines are a safety hazard if there is a breach and notes that the projects are heavily subsidized through federal tax incentives. A flash point for local resistance was the proposal by pipelines to use eminent domain to acquire rights-of-way over the objections of landowners.

A Chicago law firm filed the motion with the Illinois Commerce Commission to withdraw Navigator’s application, without restrictions on its right to file a new application.

In a statement, Navigator said it would reassess the proposed path of the pipeline in Illinois and “re-initiate Illinois permitting, if appropriate, when Navigator’s full evaluation is complete,” reported the Iowa Capital Dispatch.

A Navigator spokesperson was not immediately available to discuss the outlook for the project.

More than half of the Heartland Greenway pipeline, 810 miles, would be in Iowa, with 291 miles in Illinois, 118 miles in Nebraska, 112 miles in South Dakota, and 12 miles in Minnesota.

Summit plans 2,000 miles of pipeline in Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota to collect carbon dioxide — for injection in North Dakota — from customers that include 31 ethanol refineries. Wolf said it would build a 350-mile pipeline to capture carbon dioxide at ADM plants in Iowa for storage underground in east-central Illinois.