Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is voicing his frustration with the Florida House of Representatives and the consideration by Republicans of a law pertaining to carbon sequestration.
As seen in the video below, DeSantis complained: “The Florida House of Representatives has a Republican supermajority, and what are they spending their time doing? Well, they are hearing in a committee a bill about carbon sequestration potentially injecting carbon into our soil, aquifer, and even our ocean floor.”
The Governor claimed, “Carbon sequestration is a scam. It’s part of climate ideology and it should not be in the law in the state of Florida. Certainly should not be the work of a Republican supermajority.” He added, “Don’t indulge the left with carbon sequestration.”
Note: The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) defines carbon sequestration as “the storage of carbon dioxide (CO2) after it is captured from industrial facilities and power plants or removed directly from the atmosphere. Those captured CO2 emissions are then safely transported and permanently stored in geologic formations. Storing CO2 is increasingly important because these emissions are warming the Earth’s climate in ways not seen in millions of years. These emissions are causing wildfires, floods, and storms. They are also threatening sea life due to increased acidity in the oceans.”
Florida’s Republican supermajority is spending time on so-called carbon sequestration. Injecting carbon into our soil, aquifers, and even our ocean floor is a non-starter. Carbon sequestration is a scam. A GOP supermajority is a terrible thing to waste. pic.twitter.com/qg5sw7dcaB
— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) March 31, 2025
MAGA supporters on X agree with DeSantis’s message and claim that planting trees will take care of everything, as one replied: “Want to sequester carbon directly from CO2? It is called planting a tree. Give me my billion dollar grant money I solved it!” Another asked for a list of the Republicans who are considering “the scam.”
Alex Cranberg, chairman of the oil and gas company Aspect Energy, replied to DeSantis: “Let’s be careful not to stigmatize the valuable and long-standing practice of injecting CO2 into underground oil reservoirs to enhance oil recovery. As with most oil producing states this has gone on for years in Florida with zero criticism.”
Enhance Oil Recovery (EOR), a process by which oil producers force CO2 underground to bring up more crude, is said to increase a well’s oil production by as much as 50 percent.
Let’s be careful not to stigmatize the valuable and long-standing practice of injecting CO2 into underground oil reservoirs to enhance oil recovery. As with most oil producing states this has gone on for years in Florida with zero criticism.
— Alex Cranberg (@acranberg) March 31, 2025
Lon Whitman, director of the Enhanced Oil Recovery Institute (EORI) based in Casper, Wyoming, told E&E News by Politico in September that operators in the past never thought about the CO2 they were storing, except that it created another expense.
“They were aware because they had to continue to purchase more CO2” to flood the fields, Whitman said. “From Day 1, part of the carbon dioxide each cycle was being kept underground. Then with the desire to clean the environment, or to look at gases that are potentially causing problems, the storage discussion began — I think the oil business was years ahead because they had already been doing that.”
Note: In February, Jessie Stolark, executive director of The Carbon Capture Coalition, congratulated Trump’s cabinet members EPA director Lee Zeldin, Secretary of Interior Doug Burgum, and Secretary of Energy Chris Wright. She wrote in a statement: “We are encouraged by the new cabinet appointees’ positive comments about carbon management in their Senate confirmation hearings and past support for these technologies in their roles in government and the private sector.”