Deja Vu All Over Again: Carbon Dioxide Storage Poses Large Known Risks

In March 2020, Ernest Moniz, former secretary of energy, advisor to the president of MIT, and head of a natural gas promoting think tank, weighed in on the status of carbon capture. 

“This is the kind of stuff— Let’s get on with it,” Moniz said. “We’ve got to do projects and move forward.”

In May 2024, Moniz continued his efforts to push fossil fuels and carbon capture as the future of energy and released an oil and gas industry-funded report touting natural gas (methane) as an “essential” part of the world’s energy future. 

MIT is considered one of the top scientific institutions in the world. Which has made it an ideal institution to provide cover for Moniz continually ignoring science to promote fossil fuels. As the U.S. government continues to support the fossil fuel industry with the false promise of carbon capture behind the cheerleading of the likes of Moniz and oil company CEOs, it’s a good time to review some history. 

Fracking Can Be “Environmentally Sound”

In 2014, Moniz was on British TV touting fracking as being environmentally sound and that “we continue to not see examples of fracking, hydraulic fracking, compromising fresh water.”   

Just as Moniz is now pushing the idea that carbon capture is a good idea and we need to “get on with it,” he was selling fracking to the world as a safe and environmentally friendly approach. 

Here are some recent stories on the environmental impacts of fracking and oil and gas production on the environment.

In April we learned about how some of the injection wells in Ohio —which are used to dispose of the toxic and often radioactive fracking wastewater —  are leaking and contaminating drinking water sources.

After state regulators finally shut down the industrial disposal wells sending dangerous chemicals and fracking waste gurgling to the surface or streaming into shallow aquifers (that store most of your neighborhood’s drinking water) an industry-friendly panel — appointed by your governor — allowed the leaking wells to resume leaking.

Fracking chemicals leaking into aquifers is not environmentally sound.  In June a new Houston Chronicle investigation documented the ongoing air pollution in Texas from the oil and gas fracking boom. The investigation recounts an incident where state employees investigating the pollution “fled” because: 

“Breathing it in, the state workers grew sick: racing heartbeats, headaches, nausea. Their equipment had picked up what internal notes would later call ‘insanely high’ levels of gas in the neighborhood.”And it’s not just the air being poisoned by the oil industry’s fracking efforts in Texas.  as I wrote previously, the water situation in Texas is a disaster.

In April the Wall Street Journal reported on the frightening impacts of the oil industry in Texas. 

“The land has subsided by as much as 11 inches since 2015 in a prime portion of the Permian Basin, as drillers extract huge amounts of oil and water, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of satellite data. In other areas where drillers dispose of wastewater in underground wells, the land has lifted by as much as 5 inches over the same period."

In the Texas Permian, thanks to the oil industry, not only is it an environmental wasteland, it is no longer even structurally sound. However, ground subsidence due to overuse of groundwater is not a new thing. Places in California have sunk more than 10 feet over the last two decades. But the ground rising in areas of disposal wells is an ominous sign that perhaps should have us thinking twice about heavily subsidizing a new injection well industry. 

In June a new study was published that found lower birth weights in New Mexico due to industrial pollution in the state. The study recommended focusing more research on the southeastern part of New Mexico — the home to the Permian fracking boom. 

Also in June, we learned about how residents in Pennsylvania are dealing with contaminated wells as a result of fracking operations. Imagine having your drinking water described like this.

“Holy shit,” he remarked as he flipped through Carmen’s most recent round of testing, this time completed by EQT’s contractor, Moody and Associates, in March. “You got a cocktail, Carmen.” Heavy metals like potentially toxic manganese, iron and aluminum were all above the federal limit. Compounds associated with produced water from fracking — arsenic, strontium and barium — were also identified, and the methane was still there, too. 

These are all recent stories. But this isn’t a new problem. In 2015 Inside Climate News reported that the EPA now acknowledged that fracking had contaminated drinking water while noting that, “In the past, top Obama administration officials such as former EPA administrator Lisa Jackson and Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz maintained that there was no evidence fracking had fouled drinking water.” 

Moniz played a critical role in selling fracking to the world. We are now learning of the massive scale of water contamination issues due to the use of injection wells required for fracking and from normal fracking operations. There is a nightmare unfolding in West Texas because all of that toxic water under high pressure keeps blasting out of old wells. 

So now is a good time to perhaps reconsider whether doing the same thing with captured carbon is a good idea. Perhaps we shouldn’t just “get on with it” as Moniz advises and instead focus on the science. We didn’t follow the science last time. We should learn from it and not repeat mistakes.

Carbon Storage Requires Injection Wells

It’s probably not fair to say that we were fooled the first time when it came to fracking’s risk to groundwater. Plenty of people warned of the risk but were overruled by the power of the oil and gas industry and their partners like Moniz using MIT as a front for their disinformation. And they are trying it again with carbon capture and injection wells despite the warnings. 

Li Li is an oil and natural gas researcher at Pennsylvania State University and recently warned of the risks of carbon capture injection. 

“If you inject it into the ground and it escapes, not only are your efforts in vain, but the carbon dioxide could also seep into groundwater or aquifers, making the water acidic and potentially causing other environmental issues.”

We are being warned that there is a big risk that carbon dioxide blasted into wells under high pressure will leak just like the toxic water in injection wells, and one likely pathway for it to escape is the huge number of old and abandoned oil and gas wells in America. A recent report by the Environmental Integrity Project explained how it would be necessary to identify all of the old wells in the state of Louisiana to address the risk of carbon dioxide injection before proceeding. As this article reports, “Louisiana has no such plans.” 

No plans to address the risks. Plenty of research warning of the risks. 

“Abandoned wells are generally recognized as the highest risk of potential of CO2 release into the atmosphere during carbon capture and sequestration and the highest potential of impact to underground drinking water sources,” said Dominic DiGiulio, a former researcher with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

In June the Environmental Protection Agency agreed to review Texas' oversight of injection wells for wastewater and carbon dioxide in response to a request by a group of environmental organizations.

We know what happened the last time we were warned. Can we avoid making the same mistakes? 

Privatize the Profits, Socialize the Losses

The environmental and climate impacts of the U.S. fracking boom are immense and we are only beginning to learn about the downsides of blasting huge amounts of poisonous and radioactive wastewater into injection wells. 

Who will pay to clean up this mess? Will MIT and Moniz take responsibility? 

As I’ve been documenting, the oil and gas industry’s business model is built on the idea of privatizing the profits and socializing the losses and liabilities. All of those abandoned oil and gas wells are one example of how this works and now the U.S. public is being asked to pay to clean them up. We should refuse and make the oil and gas companies honor their obligations. But that isn’t how they work. And they are setting things up to do the same with carbon dioxide injection wells. 

The theoretical appeal of injecting carbon dioxide into wells is that it will be trapped there forever and thus won’t add more warming to the climate. That only works if the carbon dioxide stays in the ground. If it doesn’t, we will have given the oil and gas industry huge subsidies to store carbon dioxide which then leaks out, defeating the purpose and likely contaminating more groundwater. Who will pay to address that?

Not the oil and gas industry. In Texas there is a proposed law that would exempt the companies from any responsibility after ten years. Then it would be the public’s problem. There are already laws like this in North Dakota and Wyoming. 

The oil and gas industry is very good at what they do. Elite academic institutions like MIT and Columbia provide legitimacy to the industry’s lies. In a just world Moniz and MIT would be held responsible for what they have done helping the oil industry. But in our world, Charles Koch, one of the infamous Koch Brothers, was described by MIT as “one of the most important benefactors in MIT’s modern history.” So why wouldn’t Moniz try this approach again? It worked so well the last time. 

The oil and gas industry has walked away from its responsibility to clean up its abandoned wells. That same industry now wants to blast large amounts of carbon dioxide in areas where there are hundreds of thousands of those same wells, despite the known risks. 

I suggest that no corporation operating in any state that passes laws that exempt the companies from liabilities for their carbon storage should receive any federal funding. These companies are about to get a major cash infusion from tax credits for carbon storage, they should have to financially guarantee their work. If these companies and their champions like Moniz are being honest, that should be a fine deal for them. 

Are they being honest? EQT is one of the country's biggest gas producers. EQT’s CEO Toby Rice often promotes natural gas as a climate solution. As mentioned earlier, in June we learned how EQT’s fracking operations have very likely polluted the drinking water for the town of New Freeport, PA. One of the risks of fracking is that the high pressure involved doesn’t just fracture the targeted areas and the high pressure fluids and gas always follow the path of least resistance — which is often an abandoned oil and gas well. In 2022, EQT was fracking near New Freeport and “fluid erupted from an abandoned gas well along Main Street.” 

And now much of the drinking water in New Freeport is contaminated. Public Source posted a video of EQT employees observing a thoroughly frightening phenomena — gas blasting out of a hole in the ground in a New Freeport back yard. The fracking operations started a minute before the gas started blasting out of the hole. The employees acknowledge the correlation. Watch the video.

And yet, EQT now says there is no evidence that their fracking operations have anything to do with the ruined drinking water in Freeport, PA. 

It is the classic denial from the industry. They knew. It’s on the video. Their chemicals are in the drinking water. And then they deny. Why not?  It worked for decades with climate science denial. If there is one thing the oil industry understands very well, it is the value of The Big Lie. 

This industry can’t be trusted. As long as we let them continue business as usual we will see greater climate impacts and ongoing environmental damage like the destruction of local communities like New Freeport. The only real solution to these problems is to keep oil and gas in the ground while at the same time not making the mistake of blasting high pressure carbon dioxide into more wells. The misguided and misinformed attempts to hide the sins of the oil and gas industry by injecting them underground don’t work and are already causing massive environmental issues with no existing solution. 

One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Subsidizing insanity is even crazier. 

This whole thing is a form of madness. The oil and gas industry has convinced the government that the oil and gas companies are the ones who should get a lot of money to deal with the carbon dioxide issue they caused. They are proposing using the same technology that is currently turning sections of the country into a toxic wasteland. And, since they don’t plan to pay for any of the mess they have made, and will continue to make, they are getting laws passed to say they won’t have any liability if things go wrong.  

Fracking has made Pennsylvania a gas industry sacrifice zone. But the same can’t be said for New York. Why? They didn’t trust Moniz and his ilk and the state banned fracking. Looking pretty smart in hindsight. That sort of common sense and science-backed approach should be how we proceed with reckless plans to let the oil and gas industry pump more of its sins underground. 

In the News

I’d like to thank all of the subscribers and supporters of Powering the Planet. A few of you chipped in some money when this started 6 months ago and then I had no choice but to write. And your support is having an impact. Last week John Kostyack’s Forbes op-ed “Reality Check For Regulators: A Dangerous Carbon Bubble Persists” linked to a Powering the Planet article which stated, “as analyst Justin Mikulka has shown, they [oil and gas industry] have effectively used the media to disseminate an unsupported claim that their Permian assets will be among the world’s low-cost producers.”

I’ve got some exciting things happening in the coming months and plenty to write about. Thanks again.