BISMARCK, ND. North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum is one of Donald Trump’s most visible and vocal supporters, racing across the country to drum up support for the former president’s comeback bid as he auditions to be his running mate.
Away from the campaign glitz, however, Burgum is struggling with a gigantic carbon dioxide pipeline project in his home state. The $5.5 billion undertaking has divided North Dakota and left it in an awkward political divide, while Trump and President Joe Biden offer voters starkly different visions on how to address climate change.
A little-known Republican outside of North Dakota, Burgum is a serious candidate for the be Trump’s vice presidential pick. The two-term governor has stood out in the increasingly narrow field of choices due to his executive experience and business savvy. 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 is championing the pipeline project, which would collect planet-warming CO2 from ethanol plants across the Midwest and deposit the gas a mile underground. The pipeline aligns with Biden’s effort to address global climate change, a stance that could put him at odds with Trump.
By supporting the pipeline, Burgum is navigating the complicated issue of land ownership in deep-red North Dakota and the politics of climate change within the Republican Party.
Although Burgum outlined plans to make North Dakota carbon neutral by 2030, he avoided describing the pipeline or other carbon capture initiatives as environmentally friendly. Instead, he sees 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 in early March on a radio show in North Dakota. “This has to do with markets.”
The CO2 pipeline, known as 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 metric tons of CO2 would be buried each year in underground rock formations.
The North Dakota Industrial Commission, chaired by Burgum, is expected to decide in the coming months whether to approve Summit’s request for a permit to store all the CO2 it collects. Regulators in nearby states are also weighing whether to approve the pipeline.
As part of Biden’s investment in combating climate change, companies will be able to receive $85 from the federal government for each metric ton of CO2 collected in industrial facilities and permanently sequestered. They can also get $60 for every ton stored and later used to produce more oil, a process that involves injecting carbon dioxide into oil fields to keep them productive.
Summit is expected to receive up to $1.5 billion annually in tax credits. The company said it has no plans to use CO2 in oil drilling, known as enhanced oil recovery, or EOR. But a carbon dioxide storage permit application drafted by Summit appears to leave open the potential for CO2 to be used for this purpose.
“Our business model is 100% kidnapping,” the company said in an email response to questions. “No customer has ever approached us to transfer their CO2 to EOR.”
For several environmental and public interest groups, providing tax credits for more climate-polluting oil is a boon to oil drillers that subverts the goal of weaning companies and consumers away 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 extension of fossil fuel use for many more years or decades.”
Burgum’s office declined a request to interview the governor for this story. He hailed his state’s underground CO2 storage capacity as a “geological jackpot.” North Dakota, according to Burgum, has the capacity to store 250 billion tons of carbon dioxide underground.
That message was amplified by the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources, which estimated that CO2 could help extract billions more barrels of oil from the rich Bakken shale formation. The Bakken is a 200,000-square-mile deposit that spans North Dakota, Montana and southern Canada.
In North Dakota, the setback to the Summit project was intense, with Burgum caught in the crossfire.
There are fears that a gas pipeline rupture could trigger a lethal CO2 cloud. In 2020, a pipeline carrying compressed carbon dioxide ruptured in Satartia, Mississippi. At least 45 people required hospital treatment and another 200 had to be evacuated from the area, according to the federal agency that oversees pipeline safety.
Summit said the CO2 line in Mississippi may contain large amounts of hydrogen sulfide, a toxic gas. Its 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 fear their property values will plummet if the pipeline passes beneath their property. And they are outraged by what they allege are heavy-handed tactics employed by Summit to secure easements for the project.
Burgum largely avoided the risky subject of eminent domain. If landowners don’t want the pipeline on their property, he said, the route could be changed and someone else could get the “big check.”
Julia Stramer, whose family owns farmland in Emmons County and opposes the pipeline, said the amount of money Summit offered her for a 99-year easement was an insult.
“I informed Governor Burgum that we did not receive a ‘big check’ offer,” she told the North Dakota Public Service Commission earlier this month.
Stramer scoffed at the safety measures Summit says it is taking, telling the commission the pipeline will be buried just four feet underground.
“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 CO2 storage site. At a public hearing earlier this month on Summit’s storage permit application, Swenson said he had a warning for anyone trying to take his land without his consent.
“It seems like everyone wants what’s not theirs,” Swenson said. “You’ll end up taking this out of my cold, dead hands. And you will see how it works for you.”
Summit said it has signed easement agreements with landowners along 82% of the pipeline route in North Dakota and obtained 92% of the necessary leases at the storage site. The company added that the project also has the support of state legislators and emergency managers.
Concerns about the Summit project in North Dakota’s second most populous county, Burleigh, led the county commission to pass an ordinance restricting the pipeline run too close to residential areas, churches and schools.
“I have not received a single contact from anyone who is not affiliated with Summit asking me to support this project,” said Brian Bitner, chairman of the Burleigh County Commission. “All contacts asked me to object.”
Gaylen Dewing, who farmed and ranched near Bismarck for more than 50 years, criticized Burgum for what she sees as the governor’s leftward tilt. Burgum’s embrace of carbon neutrality put the governor in cahoots with the “Green New Deal people,” he said.
“Although he professes to be a conservative, he is anything but when it comes to environmental issues,” Dewing said.
When he’s defending Trump, Burgum doesn’t come across as a climate warrior.
Speaking at the North Carolina Republican Party Convention last monthBurgum accused the Biden administration of trying to shut down the oil and gas industries and declared that Trump would roll back federal rules and mandates that he says are stifling energy companies.
Trump has long criticized federal and state efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and has been supported by the oil and gas industry in his three presidential bids. The former president, who in the past called global warming a “hoax,” claims on his campaign website that Biden has surrendered to “crazed 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 kind of running mate who could help boost those donations.
If Burgum is not chosen to be the Republican Party’s vice presidential nominee and does not accept a position in a second Trump administration, he could always return to North Dakota to finish his final term, with important decisions looming.
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Lardner reported from Washington.
