Are You a Landowner?
DON'T SIGN ANYTHING until you are fully informed. Signing a voluntary easement now will waive your rights.
It’s YOUR Money.
The Navigator pipeline is a private, 1300-mile long project that can not be built without a massive influx of federal tax dollars, including 45Q tax credits and subsidies. The project is not viable without signficant taxpayer dollars. Yet, landowners will bear the long-term costs and impacts.
It’s YOUR Land.
Navigator will take your land for private use, enforcing eminent domain, if necessary. Experience in other areas has shown that farms with pipeline corridors such as the one proposed, have sustained crop losses well beyond the period for which the owners have been compensated. The land is permanently reduced in value. Long-term damage to drainage and field tiles is also common, often extending the impact well beyond the pipeline easement.
Evidence of compaction and mixing of soils associated with the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline. Photo courtesy of Janet Holmes. Click image for full-size illustration.
It’s YOUR Risk.
Navigator wants to place its pipeline near homes and businesses. But a CO2 pipeline is not like other pipelines. CO2 must be transported under extreme pressure. A minor rupture could be catastrophic. CO2 under pressure is a tasteless, odorless gas that can explode from the pipeline and within minutes can asphyxiate humans and livestock.
But … It’s THEIR Profit!
The Navigator pipeline is a private project, proposed by a Texas company, who with their investors are poised to make many millions of dollars if the project is built. They have no obligation to retain ownership or long-term responsibility for the pipeline. They can return to Texas with their profits and leave the pipeline and its impacts behind.
Be Informed.
Sign up to receive information about the status of the pipeline; opportunities to intervene in the process; meetings and events; and how to connect with other landowners who will be impacted by eminent domain and construction.
About Navigator's Pipeline
Navigator CO2 Ventures
Navigator CO₂ Ventures, LLC is a Texas-based midstream infrastructure company focused on providing industrial customers in the Midwest with innovative carbon capture and storage solutions. It is a company developed and managed by the Navigator Energy Services (Navigator) management team. Navigator CO2 Venture's website says it is doing its part to address climate change, while Navigator Energy Services boasts that it is the largest crude oil midstream provider in the Anadarko Basin.
Navigator has partnered with Tenaska, a private energy company in the U.S. that, in 2011, attempted to build a coal gasification plant with carbon sequestration in Christian County. That project was canceled in 2014 due to costs. Other partners include:
- Advanced Resources International Inc., an industry leading consulting and development firm in the carbon storage, unconventional resources, and enhanced oil recovery space; and
- Chabina Energy Partners, the leading strategic advisor dedicated to advancing renewable fuels and related decarbonization activity (CCUS) across the transportation, manufacturing, and energy sectors.
Dubbed the Heartland Greenway, Navigator's proposed 1,300-mile-long CO2 pipeline will serve 20 or more ethanol and fertilizer plants, and transport 15 million tons of CO2 annually across South Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois to a pre-determined location in Christian County, where they say it will be stored a mile or more underground.
It's Really Just Greenwashing
While carbon capture, transport, and sequestration is called a "climate solution", in reality it is the only proposed solution that allows the continued use of fossil fuels at the taxpayer's expense, and it is fraught with problems. Capturing and transporting CO2 from ethanol and fertilizer plants:
- Requires additional coal or gas power to run the equipment that captures the CO2 and converts it to a supercritical state required for transport. This often requires the construction of new plants.
- Does not include the capture of CO2 from operations that either power the production of these products or from facilities that capture the CO2.
- Requires fossil fuel energy to extract the natural resources for pipeline manufacturing, as well as the manufacture, transport, and placement of pipelines into the ground.
- Uses fossil fuel energy for transporting the high-pressure, liquid CO2 across hundreds of miles, and then injecting it into the ground.
- Is being heavily subsidized by the federal government through tax incentives made possible by Section 45Q of the U.S. tax code. In other words, there is a lot of money to be made for companies like Navigator CO2 Ventures.
- Is dangerous and under-regulated by the federal government, and can result in loss of life in the event of a pipeline rupture.
- Requires carbon capture and storage, a technology that is not yet proven at the scale proposed.
Some studies show that this process actually increases the release of CO2 into the atmosphere, due to the large amount of energy required to power carbon capture and the life cycle of fossil fuels.
During public meetings, Navigator also claimed they could divert some of this CO2 for use in enhanced oil recovery, the process of pumping CO2 into dwindling oil fields to get the last bit of oil out of the ground. That plan would prolong the use of fossil fuels and increase emissions.
Who Will be Affected?
As planned ,Navigator's proposed pipeline will pass through 13 Illinois counties, including Hancock, Adams, McDonough, Henry, Knox, Fulton, Schuyler, Brown, Pike, Scott, Morgan, Sangamon, and Christian. Two of these counties (Henry and Knox) will also be affected by ADM / Wolf Carbon Solution's proposed CO2 pipeline.
It will pass by numerous communities, exposing them to unprecedented safety concerns, described in the left side bar. In addition to safety concerns, impacts to residents could include reduced property values. The pipeline will require easements across private property. Impacts to farmers will include limits on how their property can be used; reduced crop yields; soil compaction from heavy equipment; and broken drainage tiles associated with construction.