When the Public Utilities Commission nuked their carbon-dioxide pipeline permit application last month, Nebraska-based Navigator CO2 Ventures rebutted rumors that it was giving up on the project to pipe carbon dioxide from ethanol plants in South Dakota to holes in the ground in Illinois.

But yesterday, Navigator sent the strongest signal yet that they are giving up on the project. The prospective pipeliner yesterday told the Illinois Commerce Commission that it wants to withdraw its permit application:

The company’s proposed 1,350-mile pipeline system suffered a setback in South Dakota in September when state regulators denied Navigator a construction permit.

Later that month, the company asked to suspend its permit process in Iowa. At the time, Navigator indicated it would wait for a ruling on its permit in Illinois, which was expected by the end of February 2024.

But the company now says it is “taking time to reassess the route and application.”

“Navigator will withdraw its current application with the intent to reinitiate Illinois permitting, if appropriate, when Navigator’s full evaluation is complete,” the company said in a prepared statement [Jared Strong, “Navigator Pulls Its Pipeline Permit Application in Illinois,” Iowa Capital Dispatch, 2023.10.10].

That leaves Iowa-based Summit Carbon Solutions as the only operator pushing for a CO2 pipeline to cash in on President Biden’s climate-change-fighting tax credits in South Dakota.