CHARLESTON, W. Va. — In response to the final passage of West Virginia Senate Bill 627, Ohio River Valley Institute Hydrogen Program Director Tom Torres issued the following statement:
The West Virginia legislature made a bad bet in 2023 when it opened up state forests, natural and scenic areas, wildlife management areas, and other state-owned lands for speculative CO2 storage development. Now, legislators are doubling down by allowing developers to lease pore space underneath state parks, further committing more of West Virginia’s magnificent natural resources to private profit.
These storage projects are unlikely to bring the economic benefits promised by their supporters but what they will do is expose even more people to the invisible but very real threat posed by catastrophic releases of CO2. Legislative efforts to remove this development from the view of park users only hides the threat of potential leaks or blowouts caused by unintended communication between storage projects and the likely hundreds of thousands of orphaned and abandoned gas wells in the state. Rather than protecting the interests of park users, this bill would make them ignorant to these dangers and less equipped to deal with them.
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