(The Center Square) – The Louisiana regular legislative session concluded Monday with two major energy-related bills stranded on the chamber floors without ever being called for votes.
One of those bills, House Bill 509, sponsored by Rep. Charles “Chuck” Owen, R-Rosepine, would have required a public hearing in any parish where a company planned a carbon injection well. After passing the House 94-0 on May 26, the bill was returned to the calendar subject to call, where it sat unvoted upon for five days until the session adjourned.
During the 2026 session, Louisiana officials and industry leaders opposed several bills that would add administrative hurdles to development of carbon capture projects. The House Committee on Natural Resources and Environment became a graveyard for a series of bills aimed at giving local parishes control over carbon capture projects within their jurisdictions.
In tight 10-7 and 9-7 votes, committee members blocked five separate measures brought by House Speaker Pro Tempore Mike Johnson, R-Pineville, that would have authorized voters or local governing authorities to prohibit Class VI injection wells and carbon dioxide pipelines within Rapides, Allen, Vernon, Beauregard, and St. Helena parishes.
The local-option bills failed to advance after nearly five hours of testimony in a chamber packed with landowners, industry executives, and environmental advocates.
Speaker Pro Tempore Johnson framed the issue as a matter of fundamental democracy and property rights. He argued that local citizens, who bear the safety risks of living near high-pressure underground carbon storage, should not have their voices overridden by state officials or corporate developers.
“What is the harm in letting our people who put us here decide by vote? When a project affects an entire community, the community deserves a voice,” said Johnson. “The people of that community deserve a voice, and right now, they feel completely left out of the process.”
Industrial groups countered that a patchwork system of local prohibitions would fracture Louisiana’s regulatory stability. Greater New Orleans, Inc. and the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association argued any regulation at the local level would create financial uncertainty for project developers. This could jeopardize more than $100 billion in proposed carbon management projects in the state, industry proponents contend.
David Cresson, president of the Louisiana Chemical Association, said letting individual parishes opt out would create an unpredictable business environment, driving billions in capital to other states. “If Louisiana creates a system where projects can be approved in one parish, prohibited in another, and potentially reversed through shifting local politics, companies will view that as instability,” Cresson told the committee. “And when that happens, capital moves elsewhere.”
State officials told lawmakers that a patchwork of parish-level rules would trigger federal litigation and imperil Louisiana’s EPA-approved Primacy in the regulation of Class VI injection wells.
“As it stands, all of these local option bills are unconstitutional,” said Dustin Davidson, secretary of the Louisiana Department of Conservation and Energy. Davidson cautioned that overriding the current regulatory structure with local political votes could prompt the federal government to intervene and rescind the state’s primacy over Class VI carbon injection wells.
The one local-option bill approved by Louisiana lawmakers, sponsored by Representative Rodney Schamerhorn (R-Hornbeck), was a modest victory for property owners concerned about the state’s rapid adoption of carbon capture technologies. House Bill 515 requires companies planning interstate carbon pipeline networks to provide advanced, written notifice at least 30 days before entering private property to do initial engineering surveys.
An effort by rural legislators to strip companies of their right to seize private land for carbon capture pipeline development was decisively crushed by state lawmakers near the beginning of this year’s regular session. House Bill 7, authored by Speaker Pro Tempore Johnson, which would have blocked the use of eminent domain in assembling rights of way for carbon capture projects, died in the House Committee on Natural Resources and Environment following a contentious, four-hour hearing.
Another bill that ended the legislative session without a vote, Senate Bill 490, an overhaul of utility regulation that would have allowed private firms to generate their own behind-the-meter power, stalled on the floor after Entergy and Cleco expressed strong opposition in committee hearings earlier in the month.
