During a meeting with state officials in Austin Tuesday, the EPA’s regional chief signaled that the agency would hand over authority on regulating wells that store carbon dioxide.

EPA Region 6 Administrator Scott Mason signed an agreement with members of the Texas Railroad Commission, the state’s oil and gas regulator. At the meeting, Mason said that “by signing this memorandum of agreement, our agencies are formalizing the next steps toward granting Texas primacy on Class VI,” according to E&E News.
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Mason was referring to Class VI carbon storage wells meant to permanently lock away carbon dioxide underground to keep it out of the atmosphere and stop it from warming the climate. Texas is at the center of a boom in proposed carbon dioxide storage projects, driven largely by tax breaks issued under the Biden Administration.

If allowed, Texas would join four other states – North Dakota, Wyoming, Louisiana, and West Virginia – in having lead authority on regulating these carbon storage wells. Critics have said the Railroad Commission cannot be trusted to regulate them effectively, citing numerous examples of failures to control pollution from oil and gas wells and wastewater disposal wells.