Long Touted As Net-Zero "Carbon Capture" Project, Multistate CO2 Pipeline Now All About Pumping Additional Oil

EDIT

Summit Carbon Solutions is a subsidiary of the Iowa-based private equity firm Summit Agricultural Group, which owns nearly 14,000 acres of farmland in the state. Both companies are founded and chaired by Iowa’s Bruce Rastetter, an agribusiness entrepreneur known for his frequent donations to state and federal Republican candidates and campaigns. When Summit first filed a petition to construct its “Midwest Carbon Express” pipeline with the Iowa Utilities Commission, it was 2021, the first year of the climate-focused Biden administration. The company proposed transporting liquified CO2 from ethanol plants in the state to be stored underground in North Dakota. At the time, the company’s argument for the pipeline was two-pronged: Carbon capture technology would cut greenhouse gas emissions and open new, lower-carbon fuel markets for corn and ethanol, boosting a struggling Midwest farm economy.

EDIT

For years, Summit was adamant that it would not pursue those smaller tax incentives. A “Get The Facts” page on Summit’s website told visitors from late 2022 through mid-2024 that the “Summit Carbon Solutions project will not be used for enhanced oil recovery.” Instead, at that time, the company emphasized the pipeline’s importance in reducing carbon emissions and limiting global warming. Summit’s public-facing climate pitch was strategic, said Brian Jorde, a lawyer representing Midwest landowners in legal challenges to Summit’s permit applications. “They leaned into sequestration,” he said. “But they only designed that business model because that was the most lucrative at the time.”

EDIT

In a complete departure from plans made just a few years ago, Summit has been quick to adapt to the new political realities. Early this year, the company scrubbed the phrases “climate change” and “global warming” from its website. Instead, a new page announces Summit’s plans to become “the critical CO2 supply artery for America’s most prolific oil and gas basins,” the Powder River Basin in Montana and Wyoming, the Bakken Formation spanning parts of North Dakota and Montana and the Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico. These regions will depend on CO2 to sustain oil and gas production in the future, Summit wrote, and the pipeline will support “America’s long-term goal of energy dominance.”

EDIT

While Summit changed their story online, a series of permitting roadblocks on the ground may have also propelled the pivot. South Dakota banned the use of eminent domain for siting carbon pipelines in 2025, creating a hurdle in the Summit pipeline’s planned route to North Dakota. Further complicating the terrain, this month a North Dakota judge revoked a permit from Summit that would have allowed it to store CO2 underground in the state. Those decisions, in turn, are imperiling Summit’s permit in Iowa which binds the pipeline to its original route. Summit petitioned the Iowa Utilities Commission in September 2025 to amend the terms of its permit and remove mentions of a specific route or destination.

EDIT

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/28032026/summit-midwest-co2-pipeline/