HB 548 revises Louisiana law governing how revenue from carbon dioxide sequestration and geologic storage operations is handled when the storage occurs on state-owned lands, water bottoms, or property owned by state agencies. The bill amends existing provisions for sovereign state lands and adds new provisions for state agency property, including land owned by the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries and the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission. It requires injection-based revenue to be forwarded to the state treasurer and then distributed according to the bill’s formulas after constitutional deductions.
For state agency property, the bill generally directs 30% of injection-based revenue to the parish or parishes within the area of review of the storage facility, with the remainder going either to the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Conservation Fund when the property is tied to wildlife agencies, or to the state general fund for other state agencies. The bill defines injection-based revenue broadly to include fees, guaranteed annual payments, and other revenue from injection operations, but excludes surface-use payments such as bonuses, rentals, and pipeline rights-of-way. It also requires monthly reporting to the Treasury and parish governing authorities and authorizes disclosure of relevant storage-facility data to help calculate payments.
The bill also clarifies that these revenue-distribution rules do not apply to local governmental entities and do not disturb existing constitutional or statutory dedications already attached to mineral office collections on behalf of state departments or agencies. In addition, it amends the wildlife-refuge statute to protect the terms of donations accepted by the state before August 1, 2025, so the new carbon-storage provisions cannot be used to breach those prior donation conditions for wildlife refuges, wildlife management areas, or public hunting grounds. A final section states legislative intent that if a future tax on carbon dioxide injection is enacted and dedicated in part to parishes, any state-agency payment obligation under this Act should be reduced by the amount of tax revenue the parish receives.
The overall sentiment reflected in the bill’s voting history was strongly favorable and noncontroversial. The measure passed the House and Senate unanimously, with no recorded nays in any of the listed floor votes, and the House later concurred in Senate amendments by overwhelming margins. No committee transcript was provided, but the voting pattern suggests broad bipartisan support for the revenue-sharing framework and the clarification of how carbon sequestration revenues should be allocated.
The main points of potential contention, as reflected in the text rather than the votes, are the allocation of revenue between parishes, state agencies, and state funds, and the bill’s interaction with existing donation restrictions on wildlife lands. The bill also anticipates future conflict over whether parish distributions should be reduced if a separate carbon-injection tax is enacted and dedicated to parishes. Those issues appear to have been resolved in the bill’s drafting, and they did not generate visible opposition in the recorded votes.
HB 548 amends Louisiana’s mineral and wildlife statutes to create a specific revenue-distribution scheme for carbon dioxide sequestration and Class VI injection operations on state-owned lands, water bottoms, and state agency property. It adds new sections to Title 30 for state agency property and revises existing provisions governing sovereign state lands, while also amending R.S. 56:765 to preserve preexisting donation conditions for wildlife refuges, wildlife management areas, and public hunting grounds. The bill directs certain revenues to parishes, the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Conservation Fund, and the state general fund, and requires reporting and data-sharing to support payment calculations.
The bill appears to have been received positively and without significant opposition. It passed both chambers unanimously, and the House later concurred in Senate amendments with near-unanimous support, indicating broad agreement on the need to establish clear rules for distributing carbon sequestration revenue. The absence of recorded nays suggests the measure was viewed as a technical or administrative clarification rather than a controversial policy shift.
The principal substantive issues in HB 548 concern how much revenue should go to local parishes versus state-level recipients, and whether carbon sequestration operations could affect prior donation agreements tied to wildlife lands. The bill resolves those issues by setting a 30% parish share for injection-based revenue on state agency property and by expressly protecting donation terms accepted before August 1, 2025. It also addresses a possible future dispute over double recovery by stating that parish payments may be reduced if a dedicated carbon-injection tax is later enacted and paid to the same parish.