08/01/2025

Fight over Carbon Storage in Texas Spills into Public Hearing

E&E News PM | Shelby Webb, Carlos Anchondo | July 25, 2025

Fight over Carbon Storage in Texas Spills into Public Hearing

An advocacy group funded by one of the nation’s largest oil and gas trade groups called its members in Texas earlier this month, offering to help them draft and practice giving comments to EPA in favor of granting Texas top authority over carbon storage wells.

It may have worked. Ultimately, hundreds of people signed up to offer public comment at the virtual public hearing Thursday, with well over half of those who talked sounding similar notes in favor of Texas overseeing Class VI wells, which are used to store carbon dioxide underground via geologic sequestration.

That frustrated efforts from Texas CCS Community Advocacy Coalition, a group of advocates and environmentalists trying to organize against the shift in authority. Few of their members were able to sign up, they said, because the slots to speak had already been filled.

The work by both groups is shedding light on grassroots advocacy efforts and how industry groups and environmental nonprofits alike are each mobilizing people for public comment. Texas’ bid to secure top authority over Class VI wells has long proved polarizing, with divisions likely only to deepen as EPA comes closer to making a final decision.

Those at Thursday's meeting who got the calls had signed up for alerts from a group called Energy Citizens, which discloses on its website that it is funded by the American Petroleum Institute.

One of them, Luke Metzger, executive director of Environment Texas, said he got a call from Energy Citizens on July 16 asking him to speak at the Thursday evening meeting and offering to help him draft and practice comments in support of state authority.

“They said they would work really carefully with me on the comments and role play the delivery of the comments and work closely with me to help craft the message,” Metzger said. “They said we’re supporting a petition to give primacy to the [Texas] Railroad Commission, and gave some talking points that it would create jobs, protect energy security and then they asked me for a firm commitment.”

There is no contact information on Energy Citizens’ website, other than a form to sign up for updates from the group. In a statement, API spokesperson Bethany Williams stood behind the advocacy push.

"API is proud to amplify the voices of millions of Americans who recognize the importance of U.S. energy leadership and to keep them informed of the state, local and federal issues that impact their everyday lives," she wrote.

Emilia Piziak, U.S. research manager at the United Kingdom-based think tank InfluenceMap, said Energy Citizens’ and API’s efforts are common.

“‘Astroturfing’ is a powerful influence tactic, used commonly in the U.S., that pretends to represent local, community interests while it is actually organized by, and furthering the aims of, corporate interests,” Piziak said in a statement. “InfluenceMap regularly observes this from the oil and gas industry.”

Energy Citizens’ work around the Thursday hearing “would not be the first time citizens groups with strong links to the oil and gas sector appear to have been involved in responses to policy measures that match what the oil and gas sector have also lobbied for,” Piziak said.

EPA announced its proposed approval last month of Texas’ request to take charge of permitting Class VI wells, a designation known as "primacy." Class VI wells are permitted by EPA in all but a handful of states.

In a statement Friday, EPA didn’t address whether it’ll look into the calls from Energy Citizens.

“EPA follows the [Administrative Procedure Act] to collect public feedback on all of its rulemakings, including its proposed decision to grant Texas Title VI primacy,” said EPA spokesperson Carolyn Holran.

‘A very powerful industry’

During the three-plus hour virtual public hearing Thursday, speaker after speaker told a similar story: They talked about their personal histories in Texas, their ties to the oil and natural gas industry and how the industry benefits the state. They also talked about how granting Texas primacy would accomplish everything from making gasoline cheaper to growing funding for local special education programs.

Many of the speakers in favor of primacy said granting Texas the authority to approve Class VI carbon dioxide injection wells would do things like lower electricity prices, increase tax funding for schools, and increase oil and gas production.

Almost all of the slots to offer public comment during the EPA meeting had been filled within two weeks of the agency opening up signing up, said Virginia Palacios, executive director of Commission Shift, a nonprofit that advocates for changes within the Railroad Commission and has been organizing efforts to oppose giving the Commission primacy.

Texas CCS Community Advocacy Coalition, which is supported by Commission Shift, held an in-person town hall on July 19 in Freeport, Texas, to tell people about Class VI primacy and why their group opposes it. The coalition also encouraged attendees to speak against primacy at the Thursday EPA meeting. The coalition offered gas cards, child care and a stipend to those who attended their in-person meeting, according to a virtual sign-up sheet.

When attendees tried to sign up to speak after that meeting, they found the spots to speak at the EPA meeting had filled, Palacios said.

“It was clear API had spent a lot of money to get people on the phone and signed up for public hearing,” Palacios said. “While a lot of their commenters were showing support for oil and gas and CCS, the comments that were coming out show they were being misled about what CCS does and its promise.”

When asked about the Coalition’s offers of child care and stipends to those that attended its July 19 town hall, Palacios said most of the communities located near where these injection wells will be located can sometimes struggle to make it to meetings, both virtually and in-person.

“The communities living next to a lot of these polluting facilities are underprivileged communities that often can’t show up if they can’t have someone take care of their kids so they themselves can get educated,” Palacios said. “Some of these areas are pretty rural, and it’s hard to get to these places. We’re trying to remove barriers for education.”

Metzger, with Environment Texas, said public perception usually suggests folks are generally against the oil and gas industry’s positions, although Texas residents generally have closer ties to the industry than people in other regions.

EPA under the Trump administration has also favored reducing regulations against the oil and gas industry.

The industry "feels they need to have at least seemingly regular folks argue their position,” Metzger said. “I think in this case it’s a very powerful industry that already has a favorable ear in the current EPA leadership. I was surprised they were going to these lengths.”

Permit pileup at EPA

Texas’ push to secure Class VI primacy comes as the federal 45Q tax credit has been tweaked multiple times in recent years, including in the megabill recently signed into law. The 45Q credit, first enacted in 2008, is a top driver of interest in Class VI wells and provides a monetary value per metric ton of CO2 sequestered.

Until recently, companies storing CO2 in saline or other geologic formations could secure a higher credit value than projects where CO2 is stored in products or through enhanced oil recovery, where the gas is used to help produce oil. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act — signed into law this month by President Donald Trump — established parity across the end uses.

EPA issued its first Class VI permits in Texas to Occidental Petroleum in early April, and this month, proposing doing so for a separate project in southeast Texas.

Of the 163 Class VI well applications that are in a “technical review” phase at EPA, roughly 36 percent are applications for wells in Texas, according to an online agency tracker.

The comment period on EPA’s draft rule for Texas primacy is open until midnight Aug. 1.