"Land Acquisition for Carbon Sequestration"

Carbon sequestration will require massive amounts of subsurface property. Sequestration operators must acquire the rights to conduct geophysical characterization activities, inject and store CO2, construct facilities, monitor plumes, conduct corrective action on existing wellbores, and, eventually, abandon the CO2 in place. The acquisition of these rights adds cost and complexity to carbon removal, notwithstanding state laws which have endeavored to address information and coordination challenges that increase transaction costs and impede private contracting. In this presentation, Tara Righetti shares the results of an empirical study of pore space acquisition agreements nationwide, including contract structure and valuation approaches. She further illustrates how the approach to land acquisition for carbon removal projects contrasts with that established for other large, public good infrastructure projects.
Tara Righetti is the occidental chair of Energy and Environmental Policies and co-director of the Nuclear Energy Research Center at the University of Wyoming. She is tenured, full professor in the faculties of the College of Law, the School of Energy Resources, and the Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources. Righetti’s research focuses on property, administrative law, and justice issues associated with energy development and decarbonization. She currently serves as the chair of the Carbon Capture, Utilization and Sequestration (CCUS) Permitting Task Force for Federal Lands and Outer Continental Shelf and as a member of the United States’ Technical Advisory Group to ISO TC 265. In 2021-2022 she served as a Fulbright Research Scholar at the Université de Lille, in Lille. She is licensed to practice law in Texas and California and is a certified professional landman.