Valero Energy Corp joins Summit's $8B pipeline after Navigator kills its own project

Another former Navigator CO2 partner is joining Ames-based Summit Carbon Solutions’ $8 billion carbon capture project pipeline across Iowa and neighboring states.

Summit, a spinoff of Bruce Rastetter’s Summit Agricultural Group, said eight Valero ethanol plants in Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota and South Dakota plan to participate in the pipeline project. Five are in Iowa: Albert City, Charles City, Fort Dodge, Hartley and Lakota.

In January, South Dakota-based POET, the world’s largest ethanol producer, said it would join Summit’s carbon capture project after Summit competitor Navigator killed its $3.5 billion project in October.

Navigator announced in 2021 it was building the pipeline with Valero, the Texas-based oil and gas giant, and BlackRock, a New York investment fund giant with $10 trillion under management. But it backed out after encountering what it said was the “unpredictable nature of the regulatory and government processes involved, particularly in South Dakota and Iowa.”

Summit and a third company, Wolf Carbon Solutions, based in Colorado, have proposed capturing carbon dioxide from ethanol plants, liquefying it under pressure and transporting it via pipeline to be sequestered deep underground. Summit proposes to sequester carbon in North Dakota and Wolf, which is partnering with Archer-Daniels-Midland Co., in Illinois.

Ethanol proponents say the pipelines are vital to American agriculture, providing a way to lower the carbon footprint of the ethanol industry, a major buyer of the corn that states like Iowa grow. The Biden administration is offering billions of dollars in tax credits to incentivize carbon capture projects as it seeks to combat climate change.

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Critics in Iowa have voiced concern about pipeline safety, the project’s impact on farmland and underground drainage tiles, as well as Summit’s possible use of eminent domain to force unwilling landowners to sell the company access to their land for the project.

Wolf has said it doesn’t plan to use eminent domain for its smaller pipeline.

Summit plans to apply to the Iowa Utilities Board for permits to connect the Valero and POET ethanol plants to its pipeline. It already has an initial application, on which the board is expected to make a decision soon.

Altogether, Summit's pipeline would extend 2,500 miles. In June, it filed a separate petition to add a 31-mile lateral pipeline through Mitchell and Floyd counties in northeast Iowa.

South Dakota rejected Summit’s proposed pipeline last year, and the company said it would return with a new application. It has said it would include POET’s South Dakota ethanol plants in its plans.

"By integrating Valero's facilities into this project, we will make major strides in providing more than a billion gallons of low-carbon fuels to a marketplace hungry for the product,” Rastetter said in a statement.

The Valero plants are expected to make 1.1 billion gallons of low-carbon ethanol per year and will lead to the capture of 3.1 million metric tons of CO2 annually, Summit said. Altogether, Summit says it will connect to 57 ethanol production facilities in the Midwest and capture and sequester about 16 million metric tons of CO2 annually.

Donnelle Eller covers agriculture, the environment and energy for the Register. Reach her at deller@registermedia.com or 515-284-8457. 

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Summit adds Valero to carbon capture pipeline after Navigator exit