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Speaker 3: We're still following breaking news of a major gas league
Speaker 3: in Yazoo County in your Highway four thirty three and Highway.
Speaker 3: At around seven pm on a Saturday in late February,
Speaker 3: residents of the small village of Starsha in Mississippi heard
Speaker 3: a loud boom, the major gas lake in Yazoo Counties
Speaker 3: and a whole town fleeing their homes after heavy rains.
Speaker 3: A pipeline carrying carbon dioxide or CO two ruptured. Ten
Speaker 3: minutes after the rupture, the private company that ran the
Speaker 3: pipelines close the main operating valves Forsatarsha, but in those
Speaker 3: ten minutes, more than thirty thousand barrels of CO two
Speaker 3: have been released into the air. Now residents started experiencing
Speaker 3: symptoms and called nine.
Speaker 4: One one I don't know if CONN they busted it, whatever,
Speaker 4: but it's kind.
Speaker 2: Of My daughter had breathing problem.
Speaker 5: She's on the floor right now.
Speaker 3: We'll got here. CO two is an asphyxient At high concentrations,
Speaker 3: you can't breathe.
Speaker 5: Its crowd, you know bad in here.
Speaker 3: The pipeline company didn't immediately notify local authorities about what
Speaker 3: had happened, so first responders reacted without having all the details.
Speaker 1: Yes, we've got a ghastly up payer.
Speaker 3: CO two displaces oxygen, so combustion engines like the ones
Speaker 3: in regular vehicles don't work properly. In the event of
Speaker 3: a CO two leak, Satasha ambulances had trouble responding to calls.
Speaker 3: Some residents had to drive themselves to the hospital. In total,
Speaker 3: forty five people were hospitalized for CO two poisoning that day,
Speaker 3: and at least two hundred had to be evacuated. Years later,
Speaker 3: some of Satasha's residents still report health problems related to
Speaker 3: the gas leak. After the Satarsha incident, there was a
Speaker 3: two year investigation by the federal government, which found that
Speaker 3: there were glaring gaps in how CO two pipelines were regulated,
Speaker 3: so the government started working on new rules. By January
Speaker 3: of this year, five years after the incident, there was
Speaker 3: finally an official proposal with new regulations that would prevent
Speaker 3: something like this from happening again, but the Trump administration
Speaker 3: quickly rescinded them before they went into effect. Satarsha is
Speaker 3: an example of what can happen when a CO two
Speaker 3: pipeline ruptures and leaks, and in the years to come,
Speaker 3: there could be tens of thousands more of these pipelines.
Speaker 3: That's because private companies want to build them for something
Speaker 3: called carbon capture and storage, which I'll get into later,
Speaker 3: but it's essentially a way to trap CO two to
Speaker 3: keep it from going up in the atmosphere as a gas.
Speaker 3: The plans include California, one of the most environmentally regulated states.
Speaker 3: And here's something to keep in mind. There's a federal
Speaker 3: tax credit that helps fund carbon capture and storage projects.
Speaker 3: And hear this. The Trump Administration's Big Beautiful Bill is
Speaker 3: getting rid of or phasing out most environmentally friendly programs,
Speaker 3: but not this one. In fact, the bill is not
Speaker 3: only keeping it, it's going to expand it because depending
Speaker 3: on who you ask, this is a critical way to
Speaker 3: address the climate crisis or a subsidy for big oil.
Speaker 3: So we're going to California's Central Valley, where there's a
Speaker 3: plan to build CO two pipelines. Many in the community
Speaker 3: are afraid of its risks and unsure if it's benefits.
Speaker 2: From Fudromdia. It's Latino USA im Maria no Josa Today,
Speaker 2: producer of Victoria Estrada, brings us a deep look into
Speaker 2: carbon capture. It's a controversial technology that addresses the climate crisis,
Speaker 2: and we look at how it's being tested in California.
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty four, the planet reached an all time
Speaker 2: high of carbon emissions. Carbon dioxide or CO two, has
Speaker 2: been proven to be one of the main factors that's
Speaker 2: contributing to the planets warming. California, which is the fourth
Speaker 2: largest economy in the world, has vowed to go carbon
Speaker 2: neutral by twenty forty five. That means that it will
Speaker 2: remove as much carbon from the atmosphere as it releases.
Speaker 2: To achieve that goal, specialized technologies are coming into the state,
Speaker 2: including the one we mentioned, carbon capture and storage. Latino
Speaker 2: USA producer Victoria Estrada traveled to California Central Valley. That's
Speaker 2: the place where many new carbon capture projects are being proposed,
Speaker 2: and Victoria brings us this story.
Speaker 3: I turned onto Buttonwellow Road, which turns into Elkell Road.
Speaker 3: Kerr County is at the southernmost part of California Central Valley,
Speaker 3: about two hours north of Los Angeles. This is fertile land.
Speaker 3: Kerrent County alone produces almost all of the carrots weed
Speaker 3: in the United States. More than half of the population
Speaker 3: here is Latino and a lot of them work in
Speaker 3: the fields. There's a lot of trees. I'm not sure
Speaker 3: what kind of fruit trees they are. There's another industry
Speaker 3: that's also very present.
Speaker 5: Oil.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the first wall. As I drove through the
Speaker 3: Elk Hills oil field, I saw hills covered in pump
Speaker 3: jacks machines that pull oil from the wells. Looks like
Speaker 3: watching a dinosaur, you know. They're metal and look kind
Speaker 3: of like giant hammers or pick axis with a polly
Speaker 3: attached to one end of the head. I drove through
Speaker 3: here because this is a place where the first carbon
Speaker 3: capture and storage project in all of California is slated
Speaker 3: to go up. The project is owned by the California
Speaker 3: Resources Corporation, which is the largest oil and gas company
Speaker 3: in the State. They're calling this project carbon terra vault Ie.
Speaker 3: So what exactly is carbon capture and storage? Let me explain.
Speaker 3: Let's say you've got a coal fired power plant or
Speaker 3: a natural gas plant that's emitting carbon dioxide, and on
Speaker 3: top of the factory's chimney where the smoke comes out,
Speaker 3: you put equipment to trap the CO two. Once captured,
Speaker 3: the CO two go through a chemical process and it's
Speaker 3: turned from gas into a type of liquid that you
Speaker 3: can then inject underground to store Here in el Kills.
Speaker 3: The plan is to put the liquid CO two in
Speaker 3: the underground deposits that used to hold oil, hopefully permanently
Speaker 3: or at least for hundreds of years. Some people in
Speaker 3: the community are nervous about the project, in part because
Speaker 3: of oil companies behind it.
Speaker 6: We grow up with oil and gas wells in our
Speaker 6: backyards next to schools.
Speaker 3: This is CSA Aguirri. He works at the Central California
Speaker 3: Environmental Justice Network in Bakersfield, Kerrent County's largest city.
Speaker 6: There's so much cut corners in California oil and gas
Speaker 6: law and enforcement.
Speaker 3: He's seen firsthand how government regulations aren't always enough to
Speaker 3: keep oil companies in check.
Speaker 6: The number One issue for a lot of government agencies
Speaker 6: is capacity, and they don't have the manpower, they don't
Speaker 6: have the hours, they don't have the needed tools in
Speaker 6: order to properly inspect and respond to leaks because of
Speaker 6: the vast amount of infrastructure that exists.
Speaker 3: And looking at the possibility of a local carbon capture
Speaker 3: project is making him recap the drawbacks of living in
Speaker 3: a place with a strong oil industry.
Speaker 6: In twenty fourteen, there was a pipeline leak that caused
Speaker 6: eight families to be evacuated for nine months from their homes.
Speaker 3: And we have breaking news out of Arvin tonight where
Speaker 3: several homes have been evacuated due to a potentially dangerous
Speaker 3: gas leak. Flammable gases, including methane, had been accumulating underneath
Speaker 3: the soil and started spreading to the houses.
Speaker 4: Officials don't know how long the company's pipeline has been leaking.
Speaker 6: And the gas leak it was discovered coming out of
Speaker 6: the outlets of a room of a woman that was pregnant.
Speaker 4: Residents in this neighborhood behind me say that they could
Speaker 4: smell gas for several days.
Speaker 6: One in that house has chronic bloody noses or allergies.
Speaker 6: One of the people that was living inside of that
Speaker 6: house has lung cancer.
Speaker 3: This wasn't an isolated event, says that and his team
Speaker 3: have documented other leaks in Current County that want to
Speaker 3: notice for months, even years, and the gas leaks, along
Speaker 3: with other pollutants from the oil and agriculture industries, have
Speaker 3: turned Current County into the place with the worst air
Speaker 3: quality in the country. Kurrent County's Planning and Natural Resources
Speaker 3: departments said they're imposing more than ninety measures to mitigate
Speaker 3: risks on the Carbon Terrible project to prevent anything like
Speaker 3: what happened in Mississippi. But since carving capture is an
Speaker 3: industrial and chemical process that releases.
Speaker 6: Other pollutants, one of the biggest concerns is how is
Speaker 6: this going to add to our pollution burden.
Speaker 3: There's also issues with the place where Carbon Terra Vault
Speaker 3: is supposed to store the CO two Because there's so
Speaker 3: many wells in the Elk Hills oil field, CO two
Speaker 3: could leak through any unused well that hasn't been properly sealed.
Speaker 3: Plus this is a seismic area. Geologists estimate that there's
Speaker 3: a twenty percent chance that an earthquake could damage the
Speaker 3: project in the next hundred years. So despite all of
Speaker 3: these questions, if this is a way to address the
Speaker 3: climate crisis, our carbon capture projects worth it.
Speaker 5: We actually have no information about the amount of money
Speaker 5: that the American tacpayer is paying for this purported climate solution,
Speaker 5: and whether or not it's a good deal, Like, are
Speaker 5: we getting anything for it?
Speaker 3: That's after the break.
Speaker 2: Stay with us. Yes, hey, we're back. And before the break,
Speaker 2: we heard about a technology coming to California's Central Valley.
Speaker 2: It's called carbon capture and storage. Supporters say it's a
Speaker 2: way to address the climate crisis, but for others it
Speaker 2: simply has way too many potentially deadly risks that the
Speaker 2: New USA producer Victori Esta that is going to continue
Speaker 2: the reporting now.
Speaker 3: Carbon capture has been presented as a win win solution
Speaker 3: for the climate crisis. It removes CO two from the atmosphere,
Speaker 3: it creates jobs, and it makes the oil industry, which
Speaker 3: the country still relies on, heavily clean up.
Speaker 7: There's dangers, there's concerns in every project in every kind
Speaker 7: of industry, But if you're mitigating those is worth that
Speaker 7: risk to supply jobs to people that need them.
Speaker 3: Rick Garcia is president of the local chapter of the
Speaker 3: League of United Latin American Citizens or LULAK, the largest
Speaker 3: and oldest Hispanic organization in the United States. Rick is
Speaker 3: retired now, but for decades he worked in the oil
Speaker 3: industry as an environmental consultant. For him, the oil industry
Speaker 3: means employment.
Speaker 7: The fact that carbon capture keeps oil and gas going
Speaker 7: in California, we're happy for that because we see the
Speaker 7: benefits to the communities as far as jobs go.
Speaker 3: Even of temporary Rick said. See the carbon Terravault one
Speaker 3: project at the center of the story is expected to
Speaker 3: create only about ten permanent positions and around eighty separate
Speaker 3: temporary construction at the start. According to government data, only
Speaker 3: three percent of jobs in Cerrent County are directly related
Speaker 3: to oil and gas companies. That's about thirteen hundred people,
Speaker 3: and just under half of those positions are held by Latinos.
Speaker 7: There's many examples just right here in Button Willow of
Speaker 7: kids from that came from farm labor backgrounds and they
Speaker 7: were able to establish themselves, you know, either in solar
Speaker 7: projects or wind or oil and gas, and we view
Speaker 7: this carbon capture is another avenue for those type of jobs.
Speaker 3: Not everyone agrees that carbon capture is a generator of
Speaker 3: green jobs.
Speaker 5: It had been built as a climate solution, but this
Speaker 5: is truly at its core and oil production subsidy.
Speaker 3: This is Maggie Coulter. She's a senior attorney at the
Speaker 3: Climate Law Institute at the Center for Biological Diversity. Maggie
Speaker 3: takes issue at the way the federal government has been
Speaker 3: promoting carbon capture and storage through a tax credit called
Speaker 3: forty five Q. I know this is starting to sound
Speaker 3: like an episode of severance, but stay with me. With
Speaker 3: forty five Q, private companies get a tax break when
Speaker 3: they take CO two and store it underground. But for Maggie,
Speaker 3: the problem is that no one's actually checking that the
Speaker 3: CO two is really being put away.
Speaker 5: They're relying on either the company submitting independent third party
Speaker 5: verification of the storage or a self certified verification that's
Speaker 5: submitted to the EPA.
Speaker 3: The IRS relies on the Environmental Protection Agency for verification,
Speaker 3: but the EPA doesn't have a mandate to do an
Speaker 3: independent verification, so they simply don't do it.
Speaker 5: So there's really no true verification of the actual sequestration.
Speaker 3: It's a system based on trust, and that trust alone
Speaker 3: it doesn't always work. A twenty twenty investigation by the
Speaker 3: Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration found that almost a
Speaker 3: billion dollars had been improperly claimed under the forty five
Speaker 3: Q tax credit one billion dollars.
Speaker 5: And nothing has changed in the reporting mechanism since that investigation.
Speaker 3: And there's more. Under the tax credit, companies can use
Speaker 3: the CO two. They capture the CO two that they're
Speaker 3: supposed to turn into liquid and store safely underground for
Speaker 3: at least one hundred years, they can use that to
Speaker 3: actually pull more oil from the ground.
Speaker 5: It's injected into an existing oil well and used as
Speaker 5: a surfactant to scrub out additional oil in what's calling
Speaker 5: enhanced oil recovery.
Speaker 3: If you're confused, you're not alone. It took me a second,
Speaker 3: Okay more than a second to process that the same
Speaker 3: carbon dioxide that these private companies are saying they're trapping
Speaker 3: to keep it away from us and getting massive tax
Speaker 3: credits and doing so, they're not actually getting rid of
Speaker 3: the carbon. They're in fact using it to pump more oil.
Speaker 3: Around eighty percent of the money claimed under this program
Speaker 3: has been used for enhanced oil recovery, or as Maggie
Speaker 3: plainly put it earlier, a subsidy for oil production. The
Speaker 3: irony wasn't lost on California lawmakers, so in twenty twenty two,
Speaker 3: the state passed the law banning the use of carbon
Speaker 3: capture for enhanced oil recovery. But Trump's One Big Beautiful
Speaker 3: Act expanded the forty five C credit so that companies
Speaker 3: can get more money if they use the COEO too,
Speaker 3: they capture specifically for enhanced oil recovery.
Speaker 5: Why we're giving a tax credit for a production of
Speaker 5: a pollutant. It's almost like a climate fraud. There's no
Speaker 5: proof that any of this technology is actually benefiting our atmosphere.
Speaker 3: Last year, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis
Speaker 3: estimated that taxpayers could be handing over eight hundred billion
Speaker 3: dollars to private oil companies under this tax credit. That's
Speaker 3: almost three times California state budget for the next fiscal year.
Speaker 3: Last October, the Kerrent County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved
Speaker 3: the permit for the Carbon Terable one project.
Speaker 5: On favor or please guests your votes the motion has
Speaker 5: approved all eyes.
Speaker 3: A few months later, the EPA also approved the project.
Speaker 3: The permit allows the California Resources Corporation to inject CO
Speaker 3: two into the Elk Hills oil field for twenty six
Speaker 3: years before they can start the project. The EPA required
Speaker 3: the company to seal two hundred wells where carbon dioxide
Speaker 3: is expected to migrate during the project, two hundred out
Speaker 3: of thousands of existing wells in that field.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back. Hey, we're back. Here's producer Victory
Speaker 2: Estra with the rest of the story.
Speaker 3: Since at least the nineteen sixties, oil and gas companies
Speaker 3: had known that burning fossil fuels contributes to climate change,
Speaker 3: but they work to keep this from the public. They
Speaker 3: undermined the negative effects. Instead went on a pr campaign
Speaker 3: to tout their environmental efforts, like this chevron ad from
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 8: On the coast of California, Will big jets reach for
Speaker 8: the sky and one of the smallest endangered species quietly
Speaker 8: reaches for its dinner on land that's part of an
Speaker 8: oil refinery.
Speaker 3: The video assumes in on a very small blue butterfly.
Speaker 3: It looks like a cross between a nature video and
Speaker 3: tourism ad.
Speaker 8: People who work there protect the area and plant buckwet.
Speaker 3: Fast forward to today, and oil companies are evolving their campaigns,
Speaker 3: from explicit denial of the science of climate change to
Speaker 3: misleading information about their commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Speaker 3: This was a finding in a twenty twenty four report
Speaker 3: that came out of a three year investigation by Democratic
Speaker 3: staff of the House Oversight Committee and the Senate Budget Committee.
Speaker 3: The report was called Denial, Disinformation, and doublespeak Big Oil's
Speaker 3: evolving efforts to avoid accountability for climate change. The report
Speaker 3: says that oil companies are presenting carbon capture to the
Speaker 3: public as a viable solution to greenhouse gas emissions without
Speaker 3: acknowledging all of the issues with the technology. These private
Speaker 3: oil companies are forking up huge sums of money for
Speaker 3: extensive media campaigns promoting this technology.
Speaker 7: The wor all needs ways to reduce carbon emissions. We
Speaker 7: are working on solutions in our own operations, like carbon capture.
Speaker 3: While this is our front facing stance. The report shows
Speaker 3: that behind closed doors, companies talk about carbon capture as
Speaker 3: a way to prolong the use of fossil fuels. They
Speaker 3: also recognize that it's costly to scale. Internal documents subpoenut
Speaker 3: by Congress show oil companies aren't willing to invest in
Speaker 3: the technology to actually make this a climate solution, and
Speaker 3: instead are pursuing taxpayer dollars for these projects, even though
Speaker 3: in recent years fossil fuel companies have reported tens of
Speaker 3: billions of dollars in record profits. After the incident in Satarsha, Mississippi,
Speaker 3: California put in place a partial moratorium on CO two
Speaker 3: pipeline construction until new federal guidelines were published. For now,
Speaker 3: California Resources Corporation, the company behind the carbon project in
Speaker 3: the Central Valley, can only build pipelines to transport CO
Speaker 3: two within their own property. But after the Trump administration
Speaker 3: didn't allow for new regulations, there's been pressure on the
Speaker 3: state Congress to lift the moratorium.
Speaker 8: We feel that momentum is there and the moratorium should
Speaker 8: be lifted later this year.
Speaker 3: This is audio from an earnings call of the California
Speaker 3: Resources Corporation.
Speaker 7: So once that unlocks, then the ability to talk about
Speaker 7: a meters, to be able to talk about the business
Speaker 7: model is going to start.
Speaker 1: Crystallizing a lot more.
Speaker 7: But we need that physical connectivity that comes with two
Speaker 7: pipelines being approved.
Speaker 3: Right now, there are fifteen carbon capture plants already operating
Speaker 3: in a handful of states, in the US, including Texas
Speaker 3: and Wyoming, but so far the results are not impressive.
Speaker 3: These facilities only capture less than half of one percent
Speaker 3: of the country's total emissions.
Speaker 6: Here in the Central Valley. It's kind of a sacrifice
Speaker 6: zone for the rest of California.
Speaker 3: This is says that again with the nonprofit Central California
Speaker 3: Environmental Justice Network, a coalition of organizations including CESSAS, sued
Speaker 3: Current County over the recent permits.
Speaker 6: It's always in the Central Valley. It's always in the
Speaker 6: rural communities. It's always where they see so little value
Speaker 6: in the lives of the people that live inside those
Speaker 6: communities to say, hey, you know what, we should make
Speaker 6: sure that something safe and find better alternatives before we
Speaker 6: treat you like guinea pigs.
Speaker 3: The question lingers whether carbon capture and storage is an
Speaker 3: effective way to deal with the climate crisis. A study
Speaker 3: of these projects from around the world has shown that
Speaker 3: most of them can be considered failures, either because they
Speaker 3: significantly underperform in their CO two capture goals or because
Speaker 3: they shut down after a few years of operation.
Speaker 6: People kind of feel like, well, we're being treated like
Speaker 6: a dump, right, That's why is it that they have
Speaker 6: to put it underneath us. Why wouldn't they put this
Speaker 6: in richer neighborhoods.
Speaker 3: We reached out to the current county Planning and Natural
Speaker 3: Resources Department for this story, and they reply that they
Speaker 3: don't comment on projects that are in litigation. The EPA,
Speaker 3: for its part, said that they only review whether a
Speaker 3: project in dangers under ground sources of drinking water. Anything
Speaker 3: else is outside of their scope. The California Resources Corporation
Speaker 3: didn't reply to our request for comment for the story.
Speaker 3: At one of the public hearings that were held last
Speaker 3: year to discuss the Carbon Terrible One project in Kerrent County,
Speaker 3: there was a lot of debate about the possible jobs
Speaker 3: and tax revenue this could create versus the dangers and
Speaker 3: uncertainty of carbon capture.
Speaker 5: This project is focused on improving the environment. I already
Speaker 5: have in my family.
Speaker 4: Children work cancert with asthma, even congenital.
Speaker 7: There'll be jobs that last for years and years.
Speaker 4: I understand the need for work, but enough is enough.
Speaker 3: Between all the back and forth, a young community member
Speaker 3: made his way up to the podium, and that really
Speaker 3: put things into perspective.
Speaker 4: I want this to happen because us. It's scary because oh,
Speaker 4: that's why you cannot breathe and you can maybe pass
Speaker 4: or setting. So we don't want that happen. We just
Speaker 4: don't want that happen because we won't all want to
Speaker 4: stay here.
Speaker 3: Unwittingly, that kid may have spoken on behalf of his
Speaker 3: future children or grandchildren. We won't be here to see
Speaker 3: all of the consequences of the decisions made today trying
Speaker 3: to address the climate crisis, but they surely will.
Speaker 2: This episode was produced by Victoria Strada. It was edited
Speaker 2: by Andrea Lopez Cruzado. It was mixed by Julia Caruso.
Speaker 2: Fact checking for this episode by Roxanna Aguire. Fernando Echavari
Speaker 2: is our managing editor. The Latino USA team also includes
Speaker 2: Jessica Ellis Rinaldo, Leanoz Junior, Stephanie Lebau, Luis Luna Biori,
Speaker 2: mar Marquez, Julieta Martinelli, Marta Martinez, Monica Morales, Garcia, JJ Carubin,
Speaker 2: and Nancy Trujillo. Our intern is Diego Perdomo, Benni Leamres
Speaker 2: and I are co executive producers and I'm your host
Speaker 2: Mariano JSA. Latino USA is part of Iheart's Michael Dura
Speaker 2: Podcast Network. Executive producers at iHeart are Leo Gomez and
Speaker 2: Arlene Santana. Join us again on our next episode. In
Speaker 2: the meantime, I'll see you on all of our social
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