Elk Hills project tests federal approval before state rules are in place
Nearly four years ago, California lawmakers ordered state regulators to prepare for an industry that promised to fight climate change by permanently burying carbon dioxide underground, according to the Associated Press.
The law called for rules governing how companies would monitor carbon after storage and respond if something failed. It also set a January 2025 deadline for regulations addressing how companies would prove they could pay for cleanup and other costs.
The law also required California to establish a single application coordinating permits across agencies. More than 19 months after the deadline, the state has not adopted its carbon storage rules.
In May, California Resources Corp., California’s largest oil producer, began burying carbon at Elk Hills, a vast, century-old oil field in rural Kern County. The injections made the project an important test of how carbon storage would proceed while the state’s regulatory framework remained incomplete.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approved the injections. The agency could point to no other project like the Elk Hills operation in the United States, according to the AP.
The delayed state rules were intended to address monitoring, responses to failures, financial responsibility for cleanup and coordination among agencies. Those questions apply to an industry based on keeping carbon dioxide underground permanently.
The Elk Hills operation therefore combines a new form of carbon storage with an unfinished state rulemaking process. California lawmakers ordered the regulatory preparation nearly four years ago, but the deadline for the financial and permitting provisions has passed without adoption.
The project is located at an oil field with a history stretching back a century. Its carbon injections have made the rural Kern County site the first project of its kind in the United States approved by the EPA, according to the AP.