The U.S. is expanding CO2 pipelines. One poisoned town wants you to know its story
SATARTIA, Miss. – On Feb. 22, 2020, a clear Saturday after weeks of rain, Deemmeris Debra'e Burns, his brother and cousin decided to go fishing. They were headed home in a red Cadillac when they heard a boom and saw a big white cloud shooting into the evening sky.
Burns' first thought was a pipeline explosion. He didn't know what was filling the air, but he called his mom, Thelma Brown, to warn her to get inside. He told her he was coming.
Brown gathered her young grandchild and great-grandchildren she was watching, took them into her back bedroom, and got under the quilt with them. And waited.
"They didn't come," Brown says. "Ten minutes. I knew they would've been here in five minutes, but they didn't come."
Little did she know, her sons and nephew were just down the road in the Cadillac, unconscious, victims of a mass poisoning from a carbon dioxide pipeline rupture. As the carbon dioxide moved through the rural community, more than 200 people evacuated and at least 45 people were hospitalized. Cars stopped working, hobbling emergency response. People lay on the ground, shaking and unable to breathe. First responders didn't know what was going on. "It looked like you were going through the zombie apocalypse," says Jack Willingham, emergency director for Yazoo County.
Now, three years after the CO2 poisoning from the pipeline break, some in Satartia see the incident as a warning at a critical moment for U.S. climate policy. The country is looking at a dramatic expansion of its carbon dioxide pipeline network, thanks in part to billions of dollars of incentives in last year's climate legislation. Last week, the Biden administration announced $251 million for a dozen climate projects that focus on CO2 transport and storage.
The story of the pipeline rupture and its lasting effects was first reported in HuffPost in 2021 by the Climate Investigations Center. The Center obtained recordings of the 911 calls and shared them with NPR.
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Comment
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Comment by Dan McKay on December 19, 2023 at 6:41am
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Is Repurposing Natural Gas Pipelines an Option?
The use of an existing natural gas pipeline is not a practical option for CO2 transport for large flow rates of 1 BSCF/D (19 Mtpa) or more over long distances of hundreds of miles and more.
Existing natural gas pipelines have a maximum pressure rating of 1,480 psig, which are defined by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) as Class 600 pipelines. A pipeline built for CO2 service is designed for 2,200 psig, which is an ANSI Class 900 pipeline. There are a few examples of an existing pipeline that was converted to CO2 service for lower flow rates and/or shorter distances (less than 100 miles). For longer distances, however, the lower rating of an existing gas pipeline requires many more pump stations along the route compared with a pipeline built for CO2 service.
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Last year, a pipeline carrying compressed carbon dioxide mixed with hydrogen sulfide ruptured, engulfing the small town of Satartia, Mississippi, in a green haze, leaving many residents convulsing, confused, or unconscious. That explosion serves as a vivid warning about the risks posed by what could be the next generation of pipelines to crisscross the US, in a new investigation by HuffPost and the Climate Investigations Center.
Go read the harrowing story of the world’s first CO2 pipeline explo...
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Who’s Afraid of a Carbon Capture Pipeline?
Lots of people, actually
By Heather Smith Heather Smith is the science editor at Sierra Club, a former Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT, and a contributor to the atlas Nonstop Metropolis.
Maine as Third World Country:
CMP Transmission Rate Skyrockets 19.6% Due to Wind Power
Click here to read how the Maine ratepayer has been sold down the river by the Angus King cabal.
Maine Center For Public Interest Reporting – Three Part Series: A CRITICAL LOOK AT MAINE’S WIND ACT
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(excerpts) From Part 1 – On Maine’s Wind Law “Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine if the law’s goals were met." . – Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, August 2010 https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/From Part 2 – On Wind and Oil Yet using wind energy doesn’t lower dependence on imported foreign oil. That’s because the majority of imported oil in Maine is used for heating and transportation. And switching our dependence from foreign oil to Maine-produced electricity isn’t likely to happen very soon, says Bartlett. “Right now, people can’t switch to electric cars and heating – if they did, we’d be in trouble.” So was one of the fundamental premises of the task force false, or at least misleading?" https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-swept-task-force-set-the-rules/From Part 3 – On Wind-Required New Transmission Lines Finally, the building of enormous, high-voltage transmission lines that the regional electricity system operator says are required to move substantial amounts of wind power to markets south of Maine was never even discussed by the task force – an omission that Mills said will come to haunt the state.“If you try to put 2,500 or 3,000 megawatts in northern or eastern Maine – oh, my god, try to build the transmission!” said Mills. “It’s not just the towers, it’s the lines – that’s when I begin to think that the goal is a little farfetched.” https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/flaws-in-bill-like-skating-with-dull-skates/
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Hannah Pingree on the Maine expedited wind law
Hannah Pingree - Director of Maine's Office of Innovation and the Future
"Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine."
https://pinetreewatch.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/
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