Anti Pipeline Activists Cheer Expected Removal of Federal Permit Preemption From Reconciliation Bill

Representatives with Summit Carbon Solutions. (Makenzie Huber/South Dakota Searchlight)

(BY: JOHN HULT. South Dakota Searchlight) – A provision to let pipeline companies bypass state permitters is expected to be stripped from the “big, beautiful” federal budget reconciliation bill, but anti-pipeline activists want Congress to kill a carbon tax credit program before they pass the bill along to President Donald Trump.

That was the message from a group of South Dakota carbon dioxide pipeline opponents during a virtual press conference Monday. Representatives from Dakota Rural Action, the South Dakota Property Rights and Local Control Alliance, and the South Dakota Stockgrowers Association joined the call.

Last week, groups in the anti-carbon pipeline camp raised alarms about the reconciliation bill over a provision tucked within its 1,100 pages. It would have given the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission exclusive authority to issue licenses for pipelines carrying natural gas, carbon dioxide, hydrogen, oil or other energy products and byproducts.

The state permitting process has been a political minefield for a proposed carbon pipeline from Summit Carbon Solutions that would traverse parts of Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota and South Dakota, collecting carbon from ethanol plants on its way to a North Dakota sequestration site. The South Dakota Public Utilities Commission has rejected the project twic