Leawood, Kansas-based Moxa Carbon Storage LLC is moving forward with plans for a project to store minimally toxic carbon dioxide in underground voids deep under a huge swath of southwest Wyoming.
The project’s backers want to store carbon dioxide underground in nearly 605,100 acres of "pore space" beneath Lincoln, Sweetwater and Uinta counties.
Underground rock forms pore space, which is defined as a cavity or void, whether naturally or artificially created.
Moxa spokeswoman Rachel Carmichael was not immediately available to explain whether Moxa plans to capture the carbon dioxide in a direct air capture method or some other way.
The land mass where the project would be located covers the equivalent of more than 6,000 football fields.
Another One, Too
Moxa Carbon is working with the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality and Bureau of Land Management field offices in Kemmerer and Rock Springs on permits for the project.
Those DEQ permits would allow Moxa Carbon to build and operate injection wells on non-federal lands.
Filings submitted to the BLM say no public-owned surface lands would be disturbed, though the carbon dioxide would be stored in federally owned underground pore space.
Carbon sequestration is the process of injecting carbon dioxide — the most common greenhouse gas — deep underground, permanently preventing it from entering the atmosphere.
This Moxa project is separate from a second proposed carbon storage project submitted by Moxa that also is going through the DEQ and BLM permitting process.
That project is located in southeastern Wyoming. Details on this project were not immediately available from Moxa or state and federal regulatory agencies.
In February 2023, the Moxa backers assumed this second project’s proposal, which had been called the Tallgrass High Plains Carbon Storage LLC’s Southeast Wyoming project.
The BLM’s Rawlins office is handling this project’s environmental assessment.
The BLM issued a policy update in June 2022 guiding the BLM’s review of proposals for the geologic sequestration of carbon dioxide on public lands.
This is why BLM’s field offices in Kemmerer and Rock Springs are gathering comments on the Moxa southwestern project before a July 30 deadline.
The BLM’s Kemmerer field office also is considering a carbon dioxide sequestration permit application on 44,570 acres of underground pore space for another project, called the Pond Field LLC’s Sweetwater Carbon Storage Hub.
Details on the Dallas-based Pond Field project were not immediately available from the BLM.
Pat Maio can be reached at pat@cowboystatedaily.com.
