SALEM, Ohio — Granting West Virginia Class VI well primacy on Feb. 18 is part of a new plan to “power the great American comeback,” according to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin.
West Virginia is the fourth state to receive Class VI primacy, which allows a state agency to approve its own Class VI wells. These wells store carbon in the ground and are regulated by the federal EPA, but permitting at the state level can lead to a quicker approval process.
Primacy will also open the doors for the Appalachian Regional Hydrogen Hub project, known as ARCH 2. The project will create a “clean” hydrogen hub made from natural gas in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, and heavily relies on Class VI wells to be “environmentally friendly.”
Class VI wells are used for carbon capture and sequestration, a process of storing carbon dioxide in the ground to reduce carbon emissions.
West Virginia legislators applauded the move, but environmental groups say primacy will lead to rushed permits and further environmental harm in the state.
What does this mean?
The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection will be the agency in charge of regulating the Class VI permitting process.
West Virginia Sen. Shelley Capito, Sen. Jim Justice and Gov. Patrick Morrisey praised Zeldin for signing a revised final ruling, stating primacy would allow those who know the state best to regulate its activity.
“Cutting red tape advances our state’s economic growth and allows us to operate with regard for the environment — it’s a win for West Virginia because West Virginians know best how to manage our state,” Justice said, in a statement.
Others, like the Secretary of Interior Douglas Burgum and Zeldin, see the primacy approval as a way to return power to states and further innovative technology.
“In the Trump Administration, we are going to focus on innovation, not regulation to solve problems. That is the key to the prosperity of our country,” Burgum said.
Concerns
But where legislators see CCS technology as innovative, environmental advocates warn it is largely untested.
“Relatively few regulators and operators in the U.S. have direct practical experience with Class VI wells and certainly no Class VI permit has completed a full permitting cycle from construction, operation to post-injection and monitoring,” said Tom Torres, hydrogen program coordinator for the Ohio River Valley Institute.
According to EPA data, there are two active Class VI wells in the injection phase in the country, both of which are in states with primacy. No states are in the monitoring phase. West Virginia currently has three applications submitted with the U.S. EPA for Class VI wells — one well in Mason County and two in Hancock County for Tenaska’s Tri-State CCS Hub.
Environmental activists and residents have brought up concerns over Class VI wells at several virtual listening sessions with the U.S. Department of Energy for the ARCH 2 hydrogen hub and the public hearing for West Virginia’s primacy application.
These concerns include CO2 pipeline explosions, abandoned orphan wells in the region that could leak carbon, increased methane emissions and the dangers of producing hydrogen from ARCH 2.
Eric Engle, president of Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action, previously warned that delegating oversight would lead to rushed permits, weakened reviews and cutting communities out of the decision-making process — and some say it’s already happening.
Residents and environmentalists raised this alarm during the public comment period for West Virginia’s primacy application, citing the public comment period wasn’t as long as previous EPA primacy applications and that the public hearing was scheduled at an inconvenient time for communities to comment — over the holidays.
Harming communities
Torres also brought up concerns about West Virginia’s legacy of regulating wells in the past. A report by the non-profit National Resources Defence Council in 2019 found that Class II injection wells in West Virginia weren’t being properly regulated.
The report analyzed regulatory records from the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection and online database records from the West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey and found that 17 out of 19 wells were either operating under expired permits, not conducting mechanical integrity tests as frequently as required or left abandoned instead of being plugged.
According to Morgan King, climate and energy program manager at West Virginia Citizen Action, the WVDEP is also underfunded and understaffed, which makes it difficult for them to monitor existing wells.
“There’s upward of 100,000 oil and gas wells in the state plus at least 6,000 abandoned and orphaned oil and gas wells, and likely even more we are unaware of. (The WVDEP) knows West Virginia best, but there’s just not enough of them,” King said. “They can’t be everywhere all at once and I fear we’re going to see the same problem with Class VI primacy.”
Environmental justice language was also removed from Zeldin’s ruling — environmental justice refers to environmental harms disproportionately faced by marginalized communities, like rural areas.
The Biden Administration’s EPA Administrator Jane Nishida initially approved West Virginia’s application for primacy on Jan. 17, but the Trump Administration’s regulatory freeze halted the final ruling. Zeldin’s revised, pre-publication ruling took out several paragraphs of information on environmental justice initiatives.
Despite this, WVDEP’s Underground Control Injection program, which will be used to regulate Class VI wells, still includes environmental justice language.
As West Virginia prepares for Class VI wells, Ohio and Pennsylvania could be next. Pennsylvania has already developed legislation for CCS similar to West Virginia that involves forced pooling: using the pore space underneath an owner’s land even if they don’t agree to a lease.
(Liz Partsch can be reached at epartsch@farmanddairy.com or 330-337-3419.)
