Oil and Gas Watch

Brendan Gibbons

December 18, 2025

Taxpayer-subsidized carbon capture is driving a backlash in Louisiana, Texas and other states

Driven by billions in taxpayer subsidies, companies are planning hundreds of projects across the U.S. intended to capture carbon dioxide emissions from industry and pump the pollution underground. The wave of carbon capture, transportation, and storage projects is triggering backlash in the form of lawsuits, grassroots activism, and regulatory changes. States in the Gulf Coast and Midwest have had public debates and court battles over some of these projects.

Brendan Gibbons

In Illinois, a massive taxpayer-funded carbon capture project fails to capture about 90 percent of plant’s emissions

The project, run by ethanol producer Archer Daniels Midland and partners, received $281 million in taxpayer dollars via Department of Energy grants. It has stored more than 2.8 million metric tons of CO2 since 2011. However, EPA records show that represents a capture rate of only about 10-12 percent of the plant’s emissions each year at most, allowing the rest of the carbon dioxide to escape into the atmosphere. This small percentage raises questions about whether industrial-scale carbon capture technology can be a meaningful solution to global warming.

With 34 petrochemical ‘plastics recycling’ plants proposed across U.S., a small PA town fights back -- and wins

Plans to build what would have been the largest petrochemical plant in the U.S. dedicated to breaking down plastic waste into chemicals were cancelled today. The decision by the Encina company came after a town council in Pennsylvania voted unanimously to “strenuously and unequivocally” oppose the company's proposed plant on the banks of the Susquehanna River. The victory by the local community in Northumberland Borough is the latest example of rising opposition to a wave of 34 petrochemical plants proposed across the U.S. that wrap themselves in misleading language about “recycling” plastics.

Opposition mounts to aging oil & gas pipeline threatening Great Lakes drinking water

The Enbridge Line 5 Pipeline, which carries oil beneath Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, is notorious for a 2010 accident that was one of the worst inland oil spills in U.S. history. More than 20,000 barrels of heavy crude oil spilled into a tributary of the Kalamazoo River near Marshall, Michigan. This messy history weighs heavily on the future of the old pipeline, which is facing lawsuits from the Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Tribe of Chippewa Indians and the Michigan Attorney General's office.

Brendan Gibbons

A new EPA rule is meant to prevent chemical disasters, but safety advocates say loopholes remain

The U.S. experiences a chemical disaster on average once every two days, including at least 45 so far in 2024, according to the nonprofit Coalition to Prevent Chemical Disasters. However, a new safety rule the Biden administration recently released is meant to avoid such catastrophes. Advocates also say EPA should have done more, such as required air monitoring at the fence lines of major facilities and adding ammonium nitrate, an explosive material used in fertilizer, to the hazardous chemical list.

Brendan Gibbons

Thousands of abandoned wells in Louisiana threaten to leak carbon dioxide from storage projects

Louisiana is one of the hotspots in the U.S. for sequestration projects that trap carbon dioxide (CO2) underground to protect the climate. Companies are planning 58 storage wells at 24 sites across the state. However, experts say a century of oil and gas drilling has left thousands of pathways for CO2 to squeeze its way back out into the atmosphere, potentially eroding any climate benefits and creating a safety threat for nearby residents in the event of a massive rupture or leak. Two recent reports examine the threat from the more than 186,000 abandoned oil and gas wells in Louisiana.