(The Center Square) – Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry on Tuesday joined Senator John Kennedy as two of the state’s top Republicans defended private property rights in the dispute in Baton Rouge over legislation enabling industrial carbon capture and storage that threatens the control of ancestral rural land.
“If a company wants to take someone’s land without their consent in Louisiana to build a carbon capture well, I’m going to have something to say about that,” Kennedy said last week on the Senate floor. Kennedy said in his address that the constitutional right to own land is “sacrosanct.”
Landry on Tuesday endorsed Kennedy’s speech, saying on social media site X that “no one can take your land for oil, gas, or carbon storage.”
“Private property rights are already protected—by law and by our Constitution,” the governor said.
Landry added he is grateful for Kennedy’s work in ‘making this clear in the U.S. Senate.”
Although Landry and Kennedy projected a united front, a Republican-led committee in the Louisiana House of Representatives recently moved in the opposite direction. On March 31, in a 12-7 vote, members of the Natural Resources and Environment Committee rejected a ban on eminent domain for carbon projects, preserving the state’s power to expropriate land for pipelines and storage.
Other pending legislation seeks to move decision-making power to the local level. House Bill 5 and Senate Bill 61 would authorize parish governments and local voters to approve or reject carbon capture permits, effectively granting those jurisdictions the power to opt out of the industry’s expansion. Individual bills would also authorize localized opt-outs for Vernon, Allen, Beauregard, and St. Helena parishes, where public opposition often centers on environmental and safety risks—specifically the danger of carbon dioxide pipeline leaks and ruptures.
Earlier in March, Louisiana Senate President Cameron Henry and House Speaker Phillip DeVillier raised concerns that local opt-outs would create a patchwork of regulation that could drive away the industry needed to fuel the state’s economy.
Opponents of carbon capture contend a Louisiana law passed in 2020, Act 61, created a loophole that specifically allows the developers of carbon capture projects to use eminent domain upon receipt of certificate of public convenience and necessity.
While Governor Landry signed a bill in spring 2025 that would tighten these rules—requiring pipelines to serve the public and raising the threshold for landowner consent from 75% to 85% of those affected—legal challengers say these steps don’t go far enough to stop private companies from using eminent domain to seize their ancestral lands.
The governor issued an executive order in October 2025 placing an indefinite moratorium on all new applications for carbon capture injection wells following staunch opposition from leaders in parishes like Livingston, Tangipahoa, and St. Helena, where local councils have fought to maintain control over their natural resources.
In the order, Landry acknowledged this growing resistance in Louisiana’s rural areas, declaring that ‘local government and citizens… have a right to be heard to ensure safety, transparency, and local input.”
The governor said the moratorium would give Louisiana’s regulatory agencies time needed to address the technical challenges of vetting carbon capture wells, which are drilled to depths of 4,000-10,000 feet.
Dustin Davidson, Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Conservation and Energy, recently testified that every permit for a carbon capture well requires approximately 2,000 man-hours of technical analysis.
With about 33 projects now under review, this represents a technical evaluation workload exceeding 66,000 total hours for the applications currently in the state’s backlog.
