South Dakota Ag Alliance Launched
Two business colleagues are working together to achieve a consensus in the state regarding carbon pipelines.
Jason Glodt is an attorney from Pierre who lobbied on behalf of Navigator, which is a proposed carbon capture pipeline project that was denied a permit by the South Dakota PUC. Rob Skjonsberg is a Jones and Stanley County cow-calf producer, staff member for Senator Rounds (R-SD) and founding board member for South Dakota Landowner & Outfitter Alliance. The two men work together at GSG Strategies, a public relations advocacy firm. On Nov. 30, 2023, the two announced their intent to create a coalition to mediate solutions for “rural development issues, such as the controversial C02 pipeline proposal.”
According to a news release, the two have launched “South Dakota Ag Alliance” to work on issues such as carbon pipeline issues.
“We’ve done lobbying work and advocacy work on and off for the past 10 years,” said Glodt.
Skjonsberg, who served as Senator Rounds’ chief of staff until January of this year (he now serves in a less time consuming role) said he hopes to “balance the scales” for the landowner, and give them “more leverage.”
“Right now, if you are a policy maker in South Dakota, you have either option A or option B. You are either for a carbon pipeline or you are against a pipeline. There is no roadmap to depoliticize this issue and have a business discussion that has a built-in good neighbor policy. That’s what I want to create,” he said.
Glodt believes a carbon capture pipeline is “too important to South Dakota’s ag economy,” and needed for the ethanol industry. “We’ve already lost one pipeline, we can’t afford to lose the only other option we have,” he said.
South Dakota legislator Karla Lems, who has denied both Navigator and Summit easements on her own land near Canton, South Dakota, and has been an outspoken property rights advocate over the course of the pipeline discussion, said neither she, nor others she’s worked with have been contacted by Glodt or Skjonsberg.
“None of us legislators who have worked on this issue have been contacted, and none of the landowners that are in the landowner group I’m involved in have been contacted. That doesn’t really say collaboration to me,” she said.
Lems doesn’t believe in the purpose of the pipelines.
“I’m opposed to the Summit pipeline. They are still approaching landowners about a different route, which is fine, but they haven’t taken eminent domain off the table. Taking private property for private gain is unconstitutional. This is not a public use issue. If they would take eminent domain off the table, maybe we could talk,” she said.
“These ideas (capturing carbon) are being pushed from the very top, which influence our U.S. government. They are being pushed by the United Nations, by the World Economic Forum.” Lems said she believes climate change is cyclical, and is not human-induced. “The CO2 that makes up .04 percent of the atmosphere is great plant food,” she points out.
South Dakota Ag Alliance will next announce an advisory committee comprised of South Dakota residents involved in farming and ranching operations. Long-time South Dakota ag advocate Lorin Pankratz will serve as the chair of the advisory committee, said the news release.
In regard to CO2 pipelines, the organization will urge the legislature to establish landowner guardrails that include 1) land survey reform; 2) liability protection; 3) minimum depth of carbon-capture pipelines; and 4) additional recurring compensation for landowners. In exchange for these concessions, they will also support improving legal and regulatory certainty for businesses, said the news release.
Carbon sequestration pipelines are funded by private investors and will also be financed with tax incentives.
Under the Inflation Reduction Act, the government will pay qualified facilities $85 per metric ton of CO2 stored or $60 per ton of CO2 used for enhanced oil recovery or other use. Plants built to capture CO2 from the air can get $180 per metric ton. Projects have until January 2033 to begin construction.
The goal of the carbon pipelines is to trap carbon dioxide being emitted from ethanol plants across the region and pipe the carbon dioxide to depository locations underground. The process will supposedly lower the carbon footprint of Midwestern ethanol plants, giving them the ability to sell ethanol into western markets such as California.
The proposed Navigator pipeline project has been cancelled but Summit Carbon Solutions continues to approach landowners to gain easements for a proposed pipeline, which would traverse the state from south to north. Summit claims to have over 70 percent of South Dakota’s portion of the pipeline under voluntary easement.
