Pipeline company abandoning project that had been slated to run through South Dakota

Navigator CO2 couldn't overcome 'unpredictable nature of the regulatory and government processes'

It’s official. The Navigator CO2 Heartland Greenway project is dead.

The Texas-based company that had been planning to run a carbon sequestration pipeline through five eastern South Dakota counties announced Friday it’s abandoning the project.

“The development of Navigator CO2’s pipeline project has been challenging,” Navigator said in a news release. “Given the unpredictable nature of the regulatory and government processes involved, particularly in South Dakota and Iowa, the Company has decided to cancel its pipeline project.”

Navigator’s ambitions to pump carbon emissions from ethanol plants to underground storage facilities in Illinois suffered major setbacks in recent weeks, first with the rejection of its route permit in South Dakota followed by withdrawals of similar applications in other states along its route — Iowa, Nebraska and Illinois. That prompted Navigator earlier this month to pause the project for further assessment of regulatory and land acquisition hurdles it faced.

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