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Congressional Daily Record
This section captures a floor statement or debate entry. It mentions members such as John Neely Kennedy.
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April 29, 2026
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Download official Senate Record PDFReturn to issue contextMr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I rise for two reasons: First, I talked last night about carbon capture—carbon dioxide capture—injection wells in Louisiana. I am not going to regive that speech.
when you breathe, what you blow out is carbon dioxide. The world couldn't exist without carbon dioxide. Plants couldn't conduct photosynthesis. But carbon dioxide is also a gas that is heavier than air, and it rises. And it is also dispersed throughout our atmosphere.
it, one of the bad things is that carbon dioxide acts as a blanket over our world. And what happens when you are in bed, under a blanket? The blanket holds in heat. And carbon dioxide acts as this blanket, and it holds in the Earth's heat. And that can—that can affect your climate and your temperature. That is what all this discussion about carbon dioxide is all about.
produce carbon dioxide. And one of the ways you also produce carbon dioxide, I should also add, is by burning fossil fuels. So a petrochemical plant, which uses natural gas when it produces the chemicals, it also produces CO2, or carbon dioxide, just like I have been producing it as I have been breathing while we are talking.
In any event, Congress passed a statute and said: We want to try to minimize the production of carbon dioxide, which can affect our climate when we burn fossil fuels.
capture that carbon dioxide so that it is not released into the atmosphere—and, boy, do we pay a bunch of money. It is about $30 billion in spending every year. We are paying it to private companies to capture this carbon dioxide. It will be about $30 billion that we are spending by 2030.
dioxide and they want to capture it—after they capture it, they have to do something with it. One of the things that many of you probably know is that they drill-well inject it underground. In my State, that is very controversial. Some people support it. Some people don't.
carbon capture sequestration. All I am saying is that under Louisiana law, if you own property and you don't want a company drilling a well and putting carbon dioxide under your property, you should have the right to say no.
My legislation—Louisiana passed a statute. I am not saying they were right or wrong to do it, just like I am not debating the merits—or lack thereof—of carbon capture and sequestration. All I am saying is that under my State law, if a company captures this carbon dioxide and wants to drill a well and inject it beneath the surface and if they want to put it on my property and I don't want them to put it on my property, then they come to me and say “I want to drill a well and inject carbon dioxide,” I am entitled to say “Yep, you got it. Happy to help” or I am entitled to say “I don't want you to do it.” They say “Pretty please?” and I say “The short answer is no. The long answer is hell no.”
drill that well. We call it expropriation. Some States call it eminent domain. It is just like if a State wants to put a road through your property and it can't put it anywhere else, they can take your land, but they have to pay you for it. Well, in my State, the legislature says they can do the same thing with the drilling of these wells.
business of debating carbon capture and climate change and that sort of thing. If you own property, which, under my State constitution and the Federal Constitution, is an inalienable/unalienable right—you have the right to own property in America—and if a company wants to drill a well on your property and put carbon dioxide down there and you don't want them to, then you ought to have a right to say no, and the State can't make you, and the companies can't make you. And that is all I am saying. That is the only point I was trying to make last night.
saying they will, but if they start bullying people and taking their property when they don't want to give it up, in order to inject carbon dioxide beneath their
something to say about it because this money that we are paying companies to do that is from a Federal statute. It is called, I think, a 45Q tax credit. And do you know what? That 45Q tax credit can be changed. I can't make the legislature pass or not pass a law, but I sure can offer a bill to change that amount of money that we are paying companies to do this if they are going to force people and take their land in order to put in these wells.
I wasn't very clear last night. I think I was tired, and it was late, and I was also in a hurry to get home to watch “Wheel of Fortune.”