BATON ROUGE, La. — Lawmakers and industry, legal scholars and parish leaders spent several hours in February examining how planned carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects could “strand” subsurface mineral rights and reduce future revenue for landowners and local governments.

Representative John McCormick, sponsor of House study resolution No. 6 on stranded minerals, convened the House Natural Resources and Environment Committee to hear technical briefings and public comment about the legal and operational risks posed by CCS projects that use large underground “plumes” to store carbon dioxide. "This is a public hearing, and we're here to look for solutions," McCormick told the committee at the start of the meeting.

The Department of Energy and Natural Resources described the regulatory baseline and said that most questions will be project specific. "So my name is Blake Campbell, executive counsel for the Department of Energy and Natural Resources," Campbell told the committee and said Louisiana’s permitting process requires applicants to submit plume modeling for state review. Deputy Secretary Dustin Davidson added: "If there was 1 cookie cutter, 1 size fits all solution to this problem, we wouldn't be here talking about it right now." The department confirmed that unitization rules — which can allow a storage project to go forward when sufficient acreage owners consent — apply statewide and typically use an acreage threshold rather than a simple owner‑count threshold.

Experts and industry representatives outlined three recurring concerns: legal uncertainty over who owns pore space and which property owners must consent; the economics and longevity of CCS projects and the federal tax incentives that drive them; and the technical and safety questions around injecting CO2 into large subsurface volumes.

Greg Upton, executive director of the LSU Center for Energy Studies, framed the issue economically. He told the committee there are "two core issues at hand": owners who decline to participate and the ‘real options’ problem that a long‑lived storage project can foreclose future economic extraction. Upton noted unitization is intended to balance those interests but that sequestration presents differences — notably much larger footprint estimates than many traditional oil and gas units and uncertainty about plume migration and pressure changes over time.

LSU Law School Professor Keith Hall summarized Louisiana property law that will shape disputes: "The civil code of Louisiana does provide that the landowner owns the subsurface," Hall said, and he reviewed Mineral Code Article 11 and doctrines often called accommodation or correlative rights. He said courts apply a fact‑specific “reasonable regard” test when surface uses and mineral‑development rights conflict and that there is no bright‑line rule covering every case.

Industry witnesses urged caution about writing one set of rules prematurely. Tommy Faucher, president of Lamoga, said companies are avoiding areas with known mineral development and that the state and applicants are actively discussing project design. He cautioned against a “cookie‑cutter” legislative fix, saying the industry and regulators are still developing permitting practice. LOGA counsel Tommy Smart and other industry witnesses described CCS as complementary to continued oil and gas production and said federal incentives and market factors are motivating projects.

Landowners and mineral‑servitude groups pushed back. Danny Ford of the Louisiana Mineral Servitude Group said stranded minerals represent a future revenue loss to parishes and homeowners and pointed to maps of known plays (Haynesville, Austin Chalk, Tuscaloosa) overlapping proposed Class‑5 and Class‑6 application areas. Geoscientist Brad LeBlanc of Sweet Lake Land and Oil warned that creating legal uncertainty or litigation risk would deter private drilling investment: "If you introduce lawsuits ... they'll just wave goodbye, because they really want a clean lease situation," he told the committee.

Public safety and monitoring also factored into the discussion. Witnesses described examples where drilling into pressurized CO2 pockets can produce dangerous gas kicks and stressed the need for site‑specific engineering, monitoring and rules for drilling through or around an active pressure front. Committee members pressed regulators about the technical evidence the state relies on to review plume models and whether federal partners (EPA, DOD) contribute modeling tools.

The hearing produced no formal actions. Lawmakers asked the Department of Energy and Natural Resources to provide further technical details on modeling, monitoring and how permitting will treat projects that overlap areas of known hydrocarbon potential. Parish leaders and citizen groups asked for clearer statutory protections and for local revenue sharing when mineral rights are restricted.

Ending note: Committee members indicated the topic will return for further study and potential legislative proposals to clarify unitization thresholds, compensation mechanisms and permitting safeguards; speakers asked for more time to develop model language rather than rushing to broad legislative mandates.