"In February 2020, a cloud of gas washed over Sartartia, Mississippi, causing residents to pass out on the spot and sending nearly 50 people to local hospitals. Unbeknownst to the residents, a carbon dioxide pipeline half a mile away from the town had ruptured, sending a cloud of CO2 washing over the community. Rescuers were forced to don protective gas masks as cars stalled, unable to run without oxygen.
As carbon capture and storage—the process of capturing CO2 emissions from power plants and other industrial sites, then storing it permanently underground—is increasingly floated as an important component of decarbonization, pipelines carrying CO2 like the one in Sartartia could become more common. And there are disturbingly few national safety regulations in place, despite the pace of changes being made.
“There are so many gaping regulatory holes that need to be filled, and so much R&D that needs to be done,” said Bill Caram, the executive director of the Pipeline Safety Trust, a nonprofit that focuses on safety issues and regulations.
While the Trust has investigated the potential dangers of pipelines for years, a report on the Sartartia accident published last year in the Huffington Post, Caram said, was a wake-up call for them to look at regulations around CO2 pipelines in particular. The fossil fuel and pipeline industries scrambled to respond to the Trust’s report, issued earlier this year, on the almost total lack of safety regulations for these critical pieces of infrastructure."
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