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Senate Agriculture Committee advances carbon‑storage rules, egg‑marketing and cleanup fixes
Summary
The Senate Committee on Agriculture, Forestry & Economic Development voted to advance several bills, including measures to authorize class‑6 carbon‑injection wells and CO2 pipelines, a technical fix to egg‑marketing rules and a cleanup to underground storage‑tank spending limits.
The Senate Committee on Agriculture, Forestry & Economic Development on Wednesday advanced a package of bills that includes new state rules to allow carbon dioxide injection wells and CO2 pipelines, along with technical corrections to egg‑marketing and underground storage‑tank statutes.
Committee members voted to pass House Bill 14‑11, which authorizes the Oil and Gas Commission to establish a program for class‑6 wells to inject carbon dioxide into underground pore space and to apply to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for primacy over that program. Senator Matt Stone, who presented the bill, said the measure would streamline permitting, require a $50,000 application fee for computer modeling, impose an annual well fee of $1,000 and establish a per‑ton charge of $0.10 for injected CO2. The sponsor described that 10¢ per ton as being split so that roughly 3¢ would fund commission operations and 7¢ would be deposited into a long‑term storage trust fund to cover remediation when sites close.
A separate but related measure, House Bill 14‑12, would grant the Oil and Gas Commission authority to authorize, regulate and monitor pipelines that transport CO2 to those injection sites. Senator Stone said the bills are in separate code sections: one addresses well permitting and the other pipeline regulation. Senator Gilmore asked why the provisions were not combined; Stone replied the statutes affect different regulatory programs and thus were filed as separate bills. Both HB 14‑11 and HB 14‑12 were approved by voice vote in committee.
The committee also passed a technical correction to the state egg‑marketing statute (listed in the hearing as House Bill 12‑79). Senator Ronald Caldwell, who presented the item, said the change corrects a drafting error from last session to allow eggs removed from broken cartons during shipping to be transferred to another carton. The bill text requires transferred eggs to share the same expiration date, lot code or Julian date as the missing or broken cartons; sponsors said the intent is to prevent placing expired eggs into cartons with later expiration dates.
Representative Jack Latham presented House Bill 13‑83, described as a cleanup amendment to match a prior change that raised the maximum eligible expenditure for underground storage tank cleanup from $1.5 million to $2,000,000. Latham said one paragraph in the code was missed during the prior session and this bill corrects that oversight. The committee approved the cleanup bill by voice vote.
Other items: Senator Stone noted a separate fertilizer‑law bill stemming from a 1988 statute that defined 100% natural fertilizer; he said no products had been registered under that older law and the bill updates wording to reflect how the term "organic" has evolved. That measure was also advanced by the committee.
All recorded committee actions in the hearing were taken by voice vote with no recorded roll‑call tallies in the transcript.
The committee adjourned with a note that one Senate bill (SB 218) would be taken up later next week after additional questions were answered.
