About Navigator's Pipeline
Navigator CO₂ Ventures
Navigator CO₂ Ventures, LLC is a Texas-based midstream infrastructure company focused on providing industrial customers in the Midwest with innovative carbon capture and storage solutions. It is a company developed and managed by the Navigator Energy Services (Navigator) management team. Navigator CO2 Venture's website says it is doing its part to address climate change, while Navigator Energy Services boasts that it is the largest crude oil midstream provider in the Anadarko Basin.

Navigator has partnered with Tenaska, a private energy company in the U.S. that, in 2011, attempted to build a coal gasification plant with carbon sequestration in Christian County. That project was canceled in 2014 due to costs. Other partners include:

• Advanced Resources International Inc., an industry leading consulting and development firm in the carbon storage, unconventional resources, and enhanced oil recovery space; and

• Chabina Energy Partners, the leading strategic advisor dedicated to advancing renewable fuels and related decarbonization activity (CCUS) across the transportation, manufacturing, and energy sectors.

Dubbed the Heartland Greenway, Navigator's proposed 1,300-mile-long CO₂ pipeline will serve 20 or more ethanol and fertilizer plants, and transport 15 million tons of CO₂ annually across South Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois to a pre-determined location in Christian County, where they say it will be stored a mile or more underground.

It's Really Just Greenwashing
While carbon capture, transport, and sequestration is called a "climate solution", in reality it is the only proposed solution that allows the continued use of fossil fuels at the taxpayer's expense, and it is fraught with problems. Capturing and transporting CO₂  from ethanol and fertilizer plants:

• Requires additional coal or gas power to run the equipment that captures the CO₂ and converts it to a supercritical state required for transport. This often requires the construction of new plants.

• Does not include the capture of CO₂ from operations that either power the production of these products or from facilities that capture the CO₂.

• Requires fossil fuel energy to extract the natural resources for pipeline manufacturing, as well as the manufacture, transport, and placement of pipelines  into the ground.

• Uses fossil fuel energy for transporting the high-pressure, liquid CO₂ across hundreds of miles, and then injecting it into the ground.

• Is being heavily subsidized by the federal government through tax incentives made possible by Section 45Q of the U.S. tax code.  In other words, there is a lot of money to be made for companies like Navigator CO₂ Ventures.

• Is dangerous and under-regulated by the federal government, and can result in loss of life in the event of a pipeline rupture.

• Requires carbon capture and storage, a technology that is not yet proven at the scale proposed.

Some studies show that this process actually increases the release of CO₂ into the atmosphere, due to the large amount of energy required to power carbon capture and the life cycle of fossil fuels.

During public meetings, Navigator also claimed they could divert some of this CO₂ for use in enhanced oil recovery, the process of pumping CO₂ into dwindling oil fields to get the last bit of oil out of the ground. That plan would prolong the use of fossil fuels and increase emissions.

Who Will be Affected?
As planned ,Navigator's proposed pipeline will pass through 13 Illinois counties, including Hancock, Adams, McDonough, Henry, Knox, Fulton, Schuyler, Brown, Pike, Scott, Morgan, Sangamon, and Christian. Two of these counties (Henry and Knox) will also be affected by ADM / Wolf Carbon Solution's proposed CO₂ pipeline.

It will pass by numerous communities, exposing them to unprecedented safety concerns, described in the left side bar. In addition to safety concerns, impacts to residents could include reduced property values. The pipeline  will require easements across private property. Impacts to farmers will include limits on how their property can be used; reduced crop yields; soil compaction from heavy equipment; and broken drainage tiles associated with construction.