Response to “Another side to the Carbon Capture Story”

With respect, here is my response to the readers of the Hayride to my colleague’s editorial on 7 March 2026.

1. The Kale analogy is “simple,” but it belittles the complexity of the topic at hand. A better analogy would be the sale of a product that is potentially dangerous to the public. Let’s use weed killer that may or may not have carcinogens and that could, if used, damage the water supply. Selling Kale could have a benefit for some customers but there is no potential harm. Carcinogenic weed killers are another story.

2. The WHY of CCS is also obfuscated. Representative Domangue speaks of the demand for low carbon LNG by European markets. I have asked industry for months to produce a document that verifies this claim. I’ve looked and looked and can’t find any proof that the sale of LNG has any hard demands that carbon be buried permanently before it can be sold. The good representative and I were in the same meeting in DC and we both heard a number of Trump cabinet members speaking. I asked Commerce Secretary Letnick directly if there had ever been a trade deal for LNG that mandated the burial of carbon waste (sequestration) and he said flatly “NO.” He almost laughed at the question when I asked if anyone had threatened the US with such a caveat. He said “Do you think anyone would make that demand to THIS President?”

3. In the same meeting, I heard both Secretary Lutnick and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum say the Administration was in favor of capturing carbon for ENHANCED OIL RECOVERY (EOR). I asked BOTH how burying captured carbon could be tied to national energy policy and neither said that it was. Representative Domangue and I were in the same room. A few weeks later, Secretary Burgum was on Moon Griffon’s show on statewide radio and he called the permanent burial of the product a scam. Here is MY receipt for that claim: A link to those words from the Moon Griffon Show.

4. I don’t know any Republicans who disagree with President Trump’s policies on selling LNG. LNG is a great thing and it’s helping Louisiana and the world! But, I’m waiting for someone to share with me where President Trump supports the permanent burial of carbon. I didn’t say EOR. The 45Q has plenty of new incentives for EOR use. Why not pursue that?

5. And for the record: The Sierra Club is NOT funding or helping the people in rural Central or Western Louisiana. They’re just not. If anyone has a receipt, please provide it. They showed up at some public meetings, but they’re not in this debate or helping the citizens who want to control their own land and futures.

6. Senate Bill 244 (there was no Act 544 last year) did provide some important protection and common sense roll backs of previous legislation that did harm to the state. It eliminated “green house gas emissions” as a codified threat to the State of Louisiana and it placed the movement of carbon dioxide in a category where they have to prove their product is a common good before private land can be taken to move it. While I don’t think carbon movement or burial companies should be able use eminent domain at all, this bill did provide some protections for landowners. I voted for these protections. The record shows my colleague did not.

This issue is not comparable to or tied to helping our oil and gas industries except that it might throw them a life line while lawmakers continue to find ways to stop chasing them off. Our judicial hell hole has harmed oil and gas for decades. Industry representatives have told me straight up they wouldn’t be doing this (burying carbon) if they weren’t harassed and crushed by coastal and legacy lawsuits and the money weren’t so easy with carbon sequestration.

I’m for “dig baby dig,” just like my colleague, but digging to bring up a product we can sell (like oil and gas) is not the same as digging to bury something that is not wanted in communities that have a litany of unanswered concerns and who summarily do not want it.

If a parish wants this product so be it, but it’s bad form to send carbon dioxide where it’s not wanted. It just is.

Charles Owen

State Representative, District 30

Member of The Rural Caucus, The Freedom Caucus and the Central Louisiana Delegation