Feasibility of CO₂ pipeline construction to enable gigaton-scale carbon dioxide removals: evidence from historical precedent

Abstract

Transporting carbon dioxide via pipelines may be part of future carbon dioxide removal processes as one component of meeting global temperature targets. In this analysis, we use the history of fossil fuel pipeline networks to assess the feasibility of rapidly building enough CO₂ pipelines to enable gigaton-scale removals of CO₂ from the Earth's atmosphere. We collect data on scenarios of CO₂ pipeline construction, historical fossil fuel pipeline construction, and the historical context of this construction to answer four questions: (1) What length of pipeline network will be required to achieve the benchmarks of 1 Gt or 100 Mt of CO₂ in 2050? (2) What have been the largest national and international fossil fuel pipeline buildouts achieved in a 25-year period? (3) Is it feasible to build enough CO₂ pipelines to enable gigaton-scale carbon dioxide removals given these historical precedents? (4) Under what political, economic, and social circumstances have rapid pipeline build-outs occurred? We find that a pipeline network of roughly 8,000 km will be necessary to enable 100 Mt of carbon dioxide removal, and that roughly 100,000 km will be necessary for 1 Gt. There are 15 cases in the historical record of a country building 8,000 km of fossil fuel pipelines in 25 years, and only three cases of a country building 100,000km or more of pipelines in the same timescale. Rapid construction of fossil fuel pipelines has benefited from strong economic and institutional drivers, which may not apply to CO₂ pipelines in the same way. Our findings are reason for caution about the likelihood of CO₂ pipeline build outs keeping pace with CO₂ removal targets.

1 Introduction

Unless the pace of greenhouse gas abatement is increased radically very soon, large-scale carbon dioxide (CO₂) removal is likely to be necessary for avoiding the worst consequences of climate change. Several technologies for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere already exist at various stages of development. Of these, biomass energy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), and direct air capture (DAC) are among the most advanced. These technologies both have the advantage of producing a pure stream of CO₂, which can then be measured (a crucial step for creating the right economic incentives to support the industry), pumped underground, and permanently sequestered (Smith et al., 2023). DAC has the advantage of relatively low land requirements, while BECCS generates electricity. However, both technologies require suitable underground storage sites, and pipelines to connect those sites with sources of captured CO₂. Due to different constraints on location, DAC and BECCS facilities might not be located close to the best storage sites (Larson et al., 2021; Wilcox et al., 2021; Zahasky and Krevor, 2020; Zhang et al., 2015). The large scale of the pipeline networks required, and the urgent timeline on which these pipelines would have to be built, raises questions of feasibility. Is it feasible [i.e., “doable given realistic assumptions” (Jewell and Cherp, 2023)] to build these pipelines at a fast enough rate to sequester gigatons of CO₂ in time to meet climate objectives, such as those in the Paris Agreement?

Carbon dioxide can be transported by truck, rail, ship, or pipeline. Although trucking and rail might have a first or last-mile function in some cases, shipping and pipelines are the most suitable means of transporting large amounts of captured CO₂ over long distances. While CO₂ shipping may have a role due to its greater flexibility and ability to access offshore capture and storage locations (Al Baroudi et al., 2021; Pitt-Ridge et al., 2023), pipelines will likely form the backbone of any future CO₂ transport infrastructure. This means that the feasibility of capturing large amounts of CO₂ using technologies like BECCS or DACCS is closely intertwined with the feasibility of building sufficiently large CO₂ pipeline networks to support them. Similar constraints apply to point-source carbon capture and storage (CCS), which might be necessary to decarbonise heavy industry or fossil-fuel based power generation.

The scale of a pipeline network to enable meaningful amounts of carbon dioxide removal using DACCS or BECCS is likely to be very large. The phrase “gigaton-scale” occurs frequently in the carbon dioxide removal literature, referring to one gigaton of CO₂ removed from the atmosphere annually as a rough threshold at which point such systems could become relevant for mitigating climate change (Larson et al., 2021; Pitt-Ridge et al., 2023; Scherwath et al., 2024; Wesche and Skjølsvold, 2025). Achieving gigaton-scale carbon dioxide removals would put the global carbon removal industry within two orders of magnitude of humanity's total global carbon emissions (Smith et al., 2023), and close to the total emissions from “hard-to-abate” sectors such as aviation and steel-making.

Building enough pipelines to support 1 Gt of CO₂ removals from DACCS or BECCS is likely to be a daunting task, affected not only by technical challenges and economic constraints, but also by political, cultural, and societal factors. Some of these obstacles, such as social opposition to CO₂ pipelines, are already starting to make themselves felt (Splitter, 2022).

History provides a useful living laboratory for studying these kinds of complex, sociotechnical challenges (Grubler, 2012). Historical precedents, furthermore, can help with assessing feasibility. If something has been achieved in the past, it is reasonable to hypothesize that the same achievement could be repeated in the future (Jewell and Cherp, 2023). In this article, we use the history of oil and gas pipeline construction to investigate the feasibility of building gigaton-scale CO₂ pipeline networks. We answer four research questions:

• How big will future CO₂ pipeline networks have to be to reach or approach gigaton-scale CO₂ removals?

• What are the fastest national build-outs of fossil fuel pipelines that have been achieved in the historical record?

• Is a pipeline build-out enabling the transportation and sequestration of one gigaton or more of CO₂ feasible in light of historical precedents?

• What societal enablers and constraints affected past fossil fuel pipeline build-outs, and to what extent might we expect these to apply to future CO₂ pipeline build-outs?

Section 2 conducts a literature review, discussing the current state of CO₂ pipelines worldwide, as well as various estimates for future CO₂ pipeline requirements. Section 3 presents a methodology for answering the four research questions listed above. Section 4 summarizes our findings, and answers these four questions. Section 5 concludes with a discussion of the larger implications of these findings for the feasibility of CO₂ pipeline construction to facilitate large-scale carbon dioxide removal.

2 Literature review

2.1 Historical and present-day CO₂ pipelines

Carbon dioxide pipelines are not a new technology. Since the 1970s, pipelines in the United States have transported CO₂ (mostly from natural underground reservoirs) to oil wells, where it is injected to help maintain wellhead pressure and thus improve oil recovery rates, in a process known as enhanced oil recovery (EOR) (Wallace et al., 2015). Other countries, including Canada, Australia, Norway, and China, have begun building their own CO₂ pipeline networks in recent decades—to transport CO₂ captured from industrial sites or fossil fuel power stations to underground storage reservoirs—generally as part of EOR schemes (Figures 1 and 2). Separately, several carbon dioxide removal pilot projects have begun transporting CO₂ to injection sites—mostly in small quantities, by truck (Climeworks, 2021; Hill et al., 2020; Zhao et al., 2021). Only one carbon dioxide removal project—the Arkalon Ethanol plant in North Dakota, USA—uses a pipeline to transport carbon dioxide captured from the atmosphere. The majority of carbon dioxide currently transported comes from natural sources, and is injected at EOR sites rather than dedicated storage facilities.

Figure 1

Figure 2

CO₂ pipelines face several unique engineering challenges that do not apply to fossil fuel pipelines. CO₂ is prone to phase changes between liquid, gas, and supercritical fluid. While it can be transported in different phases depending on economic considerations, accidental phase changes in the pipeline can cause flow problems (Peletiri et al., 2018). To be safely transported, CO₂ must be exceptionally pure. Water contamination, in particular, can form carbonic acid, which is corrosive. CO₂ is also a friction agent, which poses challenges for using motorized “pigs” to inspect the inside of pipelines (Noothout et al., 2014). If a CO₂ pipeline ruptures, it can pose unique hazards, due to CO₂'s toxicity and tendency to settle into depressions and displace oxygen. A leak from a CO₂ pipeline in Mississippi in 2020 forced the evacuation of 200 people and hospitalized 45 with life-threatening respiratory issues (Simon, 2023).

2.2 Estimating CO₂ pipelines needed for carbon dioxide removal

The size of CO₂ pipeline networks that would be required for gigaton-scale CO₂ removals is highly location-dependent. The number and location of CO₂ removal facilities, the number and location of storage sites, and the viable routes from one to the other depend on geographic, economic, and societal factors. Thus, the easiest way to estimate the length of pipeline required per gigaton of CO₂ removal is to use existing, geographically-specific analyses of future CO₂ pipeline networks.

The literature describing future CO₂ pipeline networks for atmospheric CO₂ removal (as opposed to capture and storage from point-sources) is thin, but it contains a few useful estimates. Larson et al.'s (2021) scenarios describe the construction of CO₂ pipeline networks from 2025 to 2050, to support CO₂ storage. Their most CO₂ transportation-intensive scenario (which they name E+B-) uses 111,000 km of CO₂ pipelines to transport and sequester 1.36 Gt of CO₂ annually by 2050. Pitt-Ridge et al. (2023) propose that the same network could be used to support 700 Mt of CO₂ capture and storage per year, most of which would come from BECCS. Tumara et al. (2024) conduct a similar scenario forecasting exercise for future European CO₂ pipelines, to carry CO₂ from both point-source CCS and atmospheric CO₂ removal. They develop a range of scenarios, generally reaching a few 100 Mt of CO₂ removal by 2050, supported by CO₂ pipeline networks between 200 and 300 km long.

3 Methodology

3.1 Pipelines required per Mt CO₂ sequestration capacity

As discussed in Section 1, we use the benchmark of gigaton-scale as a rough indicator of CO₂ capture rates large enough to be relevant for mitigating climate change. We added a lower threshold of 100 Mt, to indicate systems approaching this level, as well as smaller national build-outs that might contribute to gigaton-scale global capacity despite not reaching gigaton-scale themselves.

To determine the length of CO₂ pipeline networks necessary to support gigaton-scale CO₂ removals, we use estimates from the handful of studies considering pipeline requirements for various CDR scenarios discussed in Section 2.2. Each study provides a range of CO₂ pipeline network lengths projected for various years in the future in various scenarios, with each estimated CO₂ pipeline network corresponding to an estimated rate of CO₂ capture and storage. We use this range of estimates to indicate minimum CO₂ pipeline network lengths for 100 Mt and 1 Gt of CO₂ capture and storage.

To convert this to an annual rate of pipeline construction required to meet these benchmarks in 25 years, we simply divided the values for 100 Mt and 1 Gt by 25.

3.2 Historical rates of oil and gas pipeline construction

The total length of CO₂ pipeline networks is not the only determinant of the scale of CO₂ removals they might support. Other variables such as the pipeline diameter and pressure are also important. We focus on length, because pipelines spanning very long distances pose specific challenges, such as the need to obtain right-of-way allowances and engage with a large number of communities lying along the route. Furthermore, CO₂ pipeline capacity does not neatly map onto fossil fuel pipeline capacity, due to physical differences between fossil fuels and CO₂ (see Section 2.1). An extended analysis of the implications of this choice to focus on length, including potential biases it might introduce into our findings, is presented in Appendix B.

To develop a database of global pipeline construction by country, we used information from the Global Energy Monitor (GEM)'s Global Oil Infrastructure Tracker and Global Gas Infrastructure Tracker, as well as their Wiki, which sometimes provides more details about individual pipelines (Global Energy Monitor, 2026, 2023a,b). For each pipeline in the database, we recorded its length, the countries it passes through, the distance it covers in each individual country, and its date of completion. We treated any expansion project that added length to an existing pipeline as a separate pipeline construction project. Due to the very large number of pipelines in the GEM database, we used web-scraping to partially automate the process of reading information in from the Wiki. For any data points that remained missing, we attempted to fill in the data using manual web searching, and by estimating lengths using Google Maps' measure distance tool.

Despite our best efforts, three kinds of gaps remain in our data:

• Missing or approximate pipeline lengths

• Missing or approximate pipeline segment lengths in specific countries

• Missing or approximate pipeline construction dates

In all cases where data is missing or estimated, we labeled the data for that pipeline segment as inexact. The prevalence of inexact data is reported in Section 4.2, to better contextualize our findings.

We calculated the total length of oil and gas pipelines that was added in each country, during each 25-year period from 1904 (where the data starts) to the present day. So, for example, we calculated the total additional oil pipeline built by the USA from 1904–1929; from 1905–1930, 1906–1931, and so on, all the way up to 2023. We repeated this for every country, and for every fuel (oil, natural gas, and natural gas liquids). We then identified the largest non-overlapping national 25-year pipeline build-outs from across this time series. We chose 25 years because it matches the time from the present (2025) to the benchmark year of 2050 used in many studies on CO₂ removal, and on pipeline construction (Larson et al., 2021; Pitt-Ridge et al., 2023; Tumara et al., 2024).

To expand this to consider global pipeline construction, we added up the total length of new oil, gas, and natural gas liquid pipeline construction for every year from 1904 to 2023. From this, we calculated 5-year rolling averages, and compared these values with the benchmarks established for annual pipeline construction requirement to enable 1 Gt of CO₂ sequestration and 100 Mt of CO₂ sequestration in 25 years. This allowed us to determine if global rates of fossil fuel pipeline construction are commensurate with the rates of CO₂ pipeline construction that would be required to reach these benchmarks.

3.3 Determining feasible CO₂ transportation capacity using historical pipeline construction data

We compared two sets of 25-year pipeline build-outs:

• The largest 25-year historical fossil fuel pipeline buildouts (see Section 3.2).

• Hypothetical future CO₂ pipeline network lengths required for 1 Gt and 100 Mt of CO₂ removal (see Section 3.1).

This comparison gave an indication of how many historical fossil fuel pipeline buildouts are appropriate precedents for the scale of CO₂ pipeline construction that would be necessary for Gt-scale and 100 Mt-scale CO₂ removals from the atmosphere.

3.4 Determining enablers and constraints of rapid pipeline construction

We identified six countries for deeper, qualitative study to identify key enablers and constraints affecting the pace of pipeline construction. Four of these (the USA, China, Russia, and Canada) correspond to countries in which the top-ten fastest historical pipeline build-outs have occurred (see Section 4.2). While a focus on these countries is indicated by our quantitative study, they are not very geographically diverse. Two of them are spatially vast North American liberal democracies, while the other two are authoritarian communist or post-communist countries in Eurasia, which also have very large territory. Three of the four have large land-based fossil fuel reserves, and all are large consumers of fossil fuels.

To increase the geographic diversity of our study, we therefore added The United Kingdom and Nigeria to this list. The United Kingdom represents a mid-sized, wealthy European country with large offshore fossil fuel reserves, while Nigeria represents a petroleum-exporting country in the Global South. It is worth noting that our quantitative dataset for Nigeria is lower-quality than for the other countries we have considered (see discussion of data quality in Section 3.2). This is a common problem for Global South countries. While this means that Nigeria's value in quantitative analysis is limited, its value for the qualitative analysis remains strong for the reasons discussed above. It is important to include a country in the Global South in our analysis, because CO₂ pipelines might be built in similar contexts.

To determine the key enablers and constraints of major pipeline build-outs in these six countries, we turned to secondary historical texts. Analysing these took place over the following series of steps:

• Read the histories in full, and note down key events. We carefully read each source, and noted down every event mentioned in each one, along with the years when it occurred. We identified 1,156 historical events in total. These were placed in a spreadsheet, categorized by source and country.

• Identify enabling and constraining factors. We went through all the events in our timeline, one-by-one, and identified events which had an important impact, either as an enabler or constraint (or both) on the development of pipeline networks or the fossil fuel industry.

• Code for enablers and constraints. Using a grounded theory approach (Charmaz, 2014), we coded each enabling or constraining event according to the kind of dynamics constituting each one.

• Categorize enablers and constraints according to different dimensions of feasibility. We categorized each of the enablers and constraints identified in step 3 according to Steg et al.'s (2022) typology of the dimensions of feasibility (technological, geophysical, economic, institutional, sociocultural, and ecological).

• Identify the prevalence of each enabler and constraint within the historical data. Some enablers and constraints appeared almost universally as major influences across the six countries we studied, while others were marginal factors in just a single country. We rated each enabler or constraint from 1 (only a marginal enabler or constraint in one case) to 5 (a universally important enabler or constraint, appearing in all cases).

• Assign relevance for CO₂ pipelines. Not all the enablers and constraints we identified apply as well to CO₂ pipelines as they do to fossil fuel pipelines. We rated each enabler and constraint from 0 (no relevance to CO₂ pipelines) to 5 (much more relevant for CO₂ pipelines than for fossil fuel pipelines).

• Determine combined prevalence and relevance. To prioritize different enablers and constraints in our analysis, we multiplied the prevalence of each within the historical data (step 5) with the relevance for CO₂ pipelines (step 6).

All descriptions of our codes, and the rating scales we used, can be found in Appendix A. Our full historical data, including all the historical events we noted down from our secondary sources, are available in our Supplementary material.

4 Findings

4.1 Pipeline network requirements for CO₂ removal

Larson et al. (2021), Pitt-Ridge et al. (2023), and Tumara et al. (2024) all present scenarios for future CO₂ pipeline networks which would at least partly be devoted to transporting CO₂ captured directly from the atmosphere (Figure 3). Of the three, only Larson et al. (2021) propose a network capable of capturing 1 Gt of CO₂ per year, although the other two suggest networks that could capture multiple hundreds of megatons. Larson et al. (2021) and Tumara et al. (2024) also suggest relatively rapid construction, with capacity reaching into the tens of megatons by 2030. Pitt-Ridge et al. (2023) do not say anything about build-out rates, other than that it is possible to reach 700 Mt by 2050, with a network smaller than that presented in Larson et al.'s (2021) scenario.

Figure 3

Taken together, these sources roughly agree on the length of pipeline network required for large-scale CO₂ sequestration. Achieving sequestration capacities in the hundreds of megatons requires pipeline network lengths in the tens of thousands of kilometers, while the only scenario enabling one Gt (Larson et al., 2021) requires a pipeline network with a length in the hundreds of thousands of kilometers. Larson et al. (2021) projects such a network being built in the USA over the course of 25 years, from the current status quo of just under 10,000 km of CO₂ pipelines. Tumara et al.'s (2024) findings for Europe are similar. Their most ambitious scenario projects 19,000 km of pipeline built between 2025 and 2050 to support 247 Mt of CO₂ removal per year. Pitt-Ridge et al. (2023) provide just a single data point, using Larson et al.'s (2021) 2030 network of 27,500 km of pipelines to project sequestration capacity of 700 Mt from DAC and BECCS.

These scenarios are too regionally-specific to generalize a single rate or ratio of pipeline construction required per MtCO₂. However, we can use them for a rough benchmarking of how much pipeline might be required at a minimum for different levels of carbon removals. The smallest projected pipeline network enabling more than 100 Mt of CO₂ sequestration is Tumara et al. (2024) 2040-D2 scenario, in which 113.7 Mt of CO₂ would be transported using 8,700 km of pipelines. Therefore, we can use 8,000 km as a rough benchmark to indicate the minimum plausible size for a pipeline network enabling 100 Mt of CO₂ sequestration. We have reduced this value to one significant figure to avoid suggesting higher precision than we can reasonably claim, and rounded down rather than up to emphasize that this is a lower-bound rather than an upper-bound or a median estimate. This fits well with the status quo for CO₂ transportation in the USA, where currently 8,500 km of pipelines transport 80 Mt of CO₂ annually. For 1 Gt, Larson et al.'s (2021) projection of 1,361 Mt CO₂ sequestration capacity supported by 111,000 km of pipelines is the only benchmark available. Therefore, we can suggest 100,000 km of CO₂ pipelines as a rough benchmark for gigaton scale removals.

Converted to an annual rate of construction, these benchmarks suggest that the world would need to build 4,000 km of CO₂ pipeline per year to enable 1 Gt of CO₂ removals in 25 years, and would have to build 320 km per year to enable 100 Mt.

4.2 Historical rates of fossil fuel pipeline construction

In the countries represented in our data, there are 15 examples of historical fossil fuel pipeline build-outs which meet the benchmark of 8,000 km of pipeline built in 25 years (Table 1). These occurred in eight countries: The United States, China, Russia, Canada, Australia, Mexico, India, and Algeria. Of these, just three historical pipeline build-outs, all of which occurred in the United States, meet the 100,000 km benchmark that would be required to support 1 Gt of removals in a single country. Most of these pipeline construction booms occurred in large countries that are either major producers of fossil fuels (Russia, Canada, Australia); major consumers of fossil fuels (China, India), or both (USA). Some of these findings rely on imprecise data. The construction of oil pipelines is particularly badly-recorded in the GEM database and other sources we were able to find.

On the global scale, we find that historical rates of fossil fuel pipeline construction have mostly been above 4,000 km of pipeline construction per year, which is the rate of construction that would be required to reach 1 Gt of CO₂ removals annually. And, taken as a 5-year rolling average, every year in our dataset is above the benchmark of 320 km/year necessary to enable 100 Mt of CO₂ removal (Figure 4). However, oil and natural gas liquid pipeline construction often falls below the rate of pipeline construction that would be needed to enable 1 Gt. And this benchmark is a significant fraction of the annual rate of natural gas pipeline construction, which is the highest of the three fuels. We can conclude that while gigaton-scale CO₂ pipeline construction is within the margins established by the fossil fuel industry, it would still require resources comparable to those that have historically been mobilized to build oil and gas pipelines.

Figure 4

As our global data is also affected by the incompleteness of our database (see Section 3.2), our global findings should be treated with some caution. Our data likely underestimates the total fossil fuel pipelines built worldwide each year. Table 2 summarizes the quality of our global data, showing that of all the pipelines in our database, 22.3% of pipelines, and 17.0% of counted pipeline length lack complete data (and thus might not be counted) in our dataset of global buildouts.

4.3 Implications for the feasibility of CO₂ pipeline networks

Figure 5 compares the future CO₂ pipeline scenarios presented in Section 4.1 with the historical precedents discussed in Section 4.2. It shows that the scale of global pipeline build-out required to meet the benchmarks set by Larson et al. (2021), Pitt-Ridge et al. (2023), and Tumara et al. (2024) are well within historical precedents; not just compared to the largest historical global pipeline buildouts, but also compared to some of the largest pipeline buildouts within large countries, such as the United States and China. However, these historical precedents are not very high above the rates of pipeline construction that would be required to reach these forecasts. This suggests that while it is probably feasible to build pipelines at the rate suggested by the three studies cited above; doing so would be an historic effort, requiring a substantial portion of global pipeline construction capacity.

Figure 5

4.4 Enablers and constraints of pipeline construction

As discussed in Section 3.3, we have selected six countries from our database which show evidence of rapid pipeline construction—four (the United States, China, Russia, and Canada) that show up prominently in the data discussed in Section 4.2, and two (Nigeria and the United Kingdom), representing different geographic contexts. Each of these countries has its own periods of rapid pipeline construction:

• United States, 1926–1951: An increase in natural gas supply, and a growing need to heat American cities, led to the rapid construction of several major long-distance gas lines, including the “inch” lines—two large interstate pipelines with unprecedented length and capacity for the time. This was followed by a sudden demand for new pipelines during the Second World War, and new demand and materials supply during the postwar years.

• United States, 1996–2021: In the aftermath of gas shortages in the 1970s and consequent regulatory changes in the 1980s, the American natural gas industry rapidly built out new pipeline networks. This was accelerated by the fracking boom, which saw rapid construction of fossil fuel pipelines in the second half of this period.

• Canada, 1932–1957: Following the Leduc oil discovery in Alberta, Canada went from being an energy importer at risk of shortages, to a net energy producer. With government support, the country built several transcontinental gas pipelines.

• Russia, 1965–1990: During the Cold War, the Soviet Union aggressively expanded the country's fossil fuel industry to ensure energy security following its experience in the Second World War, and to secure valuable energy exports to exchange for Western currency.

• China, 1997–2022: Growth in Chinese heavy industry during the 2000s rapidly increased energy intensity, leading to shortages. The state responded by rapidly developing the country's fossil fuel infrastructure, to transport both imported and domestic fuels.

• United Kingdom, 1961–1986: The discovery of oil in the North Sea was a boon to the British government and economy, particularly due to the need for “Stirling oil” that it could pay for in pounds. Policy priorities were therefore to on-shore as much North Sea oil as possible, as quickly as possible, resulting in a rapid offshore pipeline buildout.

• Nigeria, 1960–1985: The first discovery of oil in the Niger Delta was a major boon to the newly-independent country, resulting in large-scale pipeline construction during the first half of the 1960s, until this was curtailed by the start of the Nigerian Civil War in 1967.

The history of each of these countries is summarized in Figures 6 and 7. We have identified important historical events which had both enabling and constraining impacts on the construction of pipelines in each country, which are depicted on the lower panel of each country's chart, categorized according to Steg et al.'s (2022) dimensions of feasibility.

Figure 6

Figure 7

In what remains of this section, we sort these enablers and constraints into the six dimensions of feasibility as discussed by Steg et al.'s (2022).

4.4.1 Geophysical feasibility

The geophysical determinants of fossil fuel pipeline construction mostly have to do with the availability of fossil fuel resources, such as the Leduc find in Canada; the Western oilfields in China; or oil reserves in the Niger Delta (Akinola, 2018; Bott, 2004; Liu, 2013). These create impetus for the construction of new pipelines. The co-occurrence of natural gas with oil reserves has a more complex enabling effect, creating a perceived need to build markets and infrastructure to sell gas rather than wastefully flaring it (Blanchard, 2021).

Geophysical constraints on pipeline construction are much more limited, and mostly have to do limited availability of steel, which constrained pipeline construction during the Second World War (Blanchard, 2021).

4.4.2 Technological feasibility

As with the discovery of new fossil fuel resources, technological factors such as the development of liquefied natural gas, or techniques to convert oil sands bitumen into synthetic crude, can open up new kinds of fossil fuel supplies and spur pipeline construction (Bott, 2004). The development of fracking in the United States not only increased the supply of fossil fuels in the country; it also made regions which had been primarily consuming regions into producers, necessitating new kinds of interstate transfers (Blanchard, 2021). Advances in the technology of pipelines themselves can have a similar impact (Clark, 1963). Pipeline expansion can also follow on from failures of competing fossil fuel transportation technologies, as was the case when German submarines paralyzed American coastal shipping (Blanchard, 2021); or when Britain lost access to the Mediterranean (More, 2009).

A lack of facilitating technology can constrain the construction of pipeline networks, as was the case in the Soviet Union, which for many years had to import large-diameter pipe from its geopolitical rivals in the West (Perović, 2017). Western attempts to leverage this to block Soviet pipeline construction efforts had very little effect, however (Perović, 2017), which suggests that this kind of technological constraint might be fairly surmountable.

4.4.3 Economic feasibility

Countries have historically had very large, and growing, demands for fossil fuels, while countries with fossil fuel resources had strong incentives to capitalize on this demand by building export infrastructure. This accelerated pipeline construction the most during major crises, such as the Second World War (Blanchard, 2021; Bott, 2004; Falola, 2008; Perović, 2017), the Suez crisis (More, 2009), the 1970s energy crises (Blanchard, 2021; Bott, 2004; Falola, 2008), or China's energy shortage in the 2000s (Downs, 2010). New demand for fossil fuels, from a new technology (such as American town gas), or a growing industry (as in China in the 2000s) can also create a sudden impetus for new pipeline construction (Blanchard, 2021; Liu, 2013; Yaodong and Gillespie, 2020).

The price of the commodity to be transported through any pipeline is a common determinant of the pipeline's economic viability (Omonbude, 2009). The relationship between fossil fuel prices and pipeline construction is complicated, however. Pipelines, for one thing, are more insulated against declines in price than other parts of the fossil fuel value chain, since they can sign “ship or pay” or lease agreements with producers that pay the same amount regardless of the value or amount of commodity shipped (Roumeliotis, 2016). Conversely, insufficient pipeline capacity can force producers to sell at a discount, creating a strong impetus to build new infrastructure (Walls and Zheng, 2020). Our reading of the history suggests that high prices can have a strong political effect on increasing pipeline construction, especially when those high prices are felt by consumers (who are also voters). This was the case in the United States during the high price period of the 1970s.

A perennial economic constraint, which is particularly well-documented in the history of American pipelines, is the challenge of matching supply with demand. The optimal design of a pipeline network is different for different players in the fossil fuel value chain. Pipeline owners want a tighter network, more precisely matched to average demand and therefore with less slack capacity. They also want to minimize competition for their large fixed investments. Fossil fuel consumers want consistent availability of fuel at low prices. Policymakers often have split loyalties between these competing priorities. These issues are particularly acute for natural gas, which has high seasonal fluctuations in demand and cannot be easily stored in large quantities (Blanchard, 2021).

Solutions to this problem have included treating pipelines as common carriers; vertical integration of pipelines with production and consumption businesses; storage infrastructure; arbitrage pipelines; pay-per-use business models; and legislation limiting new pipeline construction to avoid destructive competition. These solutions all have their own issues. Vertical integration, for example, can lead to monopolism and a resultant political incentive to clamp down on pipeline or fossil fuel companies who control the market. And arbitrage pipelines can be very difficult to price on a per-energy-per-distance basis (Blanchard, 2021; Bradley, 2018).

4.4.4 Sociocultural feasibility

Sociocultural enablers of pipeline construction are rare. In the Soviet Union, during the Cold War, a kind of socialist petromodernism led to the celebration of pipelines and the people who built them (Perović, 2017), but it is not clear whether this was a cause of the USSR's pipeline ambitions during that period, or simply a consequence of them.

Sociocultural constraints, however, are very common. Environmental protests against pipelines are widely-documented in Canada, the United States, and in the Niger Delta, where at times they led to violent conflict (Bott, 2004; Bradley, 2018; Falola, 2008). Consumers of fossil fuels also sometimes have reasons to oppose pipelines, as was the case in Canada when Montrealers resisted the construction of pipelines from Western Canada, preferring to rely on cheaper imported oil (Bott, 2004). Industries—both competing industries such as American coal producers, and separate affected industries such as British North Sea fishers—have also raised objections (More, 2009).

Another sociocultural constraint comes from regional tensions. Pipelines often pass through multiple regions with different local cultures, economies, and politics, and sometimes with contentious relations to each other. Tensions between Eastern and Western Canada, or between the Northern and Southern United States, have been an impediment to pipeline construction (Blanchard, 2021; Bott, 2004). Producer regions often disagree with consumer regions over the shape of pipeline networks, or who should pay for them. In areas where fossil fuels are primarily exported, a different kind of controversy can emerge over the questions over how to distribute the resultant revenue, as was a particularly contentious issue in Nigeria (Falola, 2008).

Finally, in less politically and economically stable contexts, pipelines can fall victim to various kinds of conflict, sabotage, crime, and corruption. This is notable in Nigeria, whose pipeline network has been affected by civil war, sabotage, and theft. In the United States during the 1920s and 1930s, corruption and financial crimes around pipelines were so bad that many fossil fuel executives fled the country to avoid prosecution (Blanchard, 2021).

4.4.5 Institutional feasibility

Large pipeline projects have tended to be boosted by political, and geopolitical incentives. These can include the need for fuel for the military (Blanchard, 2021; Bott, 2004; Perović, 2017); concerns about energy security (Bott, 2004; Yaodong and Gillespie, 2020); or the need for fossil fuels as a trading commodity—either to export for foreign currency or to offset imports (Akinola, 2018; More, 2009; Perović, 2017). Another factor is the political power of pipeline operators; the fossil fuel industry more generally; or regions in which that industry is an important part of the local economy (Blanchard, 2021; Falola, 2008). Often, these political incentives translate into direct policy support, financial subsidies, or government coordination of pipeline projects, as has happened in Russia, the United Kingdom, Canada, and China (Bott, 2004; More, 2009; Perović, 2017; Yaodong and Gillespie, 2020).

Policy design is a major institutional constraint on pipeline construction. It is easy to create perverse incentives or dysfunctional regulations for such a complex, expensive, resource-intensive, and trans-regional infrastructure (Blanchard, 2021; Bradley, 2018). The United States saw how easy it is to get this wrong, when in the 1970s, decades of under-construction (likely caused in part by policies designed to keep prices low for consumers) led to a gas supply crisis that saw schools closing for lack of heating (Blanchard, 2021). British policymakers appeared to be aware of these risks during the run-up to the North Sea oil boom, given the massive political and legislative resources they devoted to be able to rapidly establish a legal framework for North Sea oil (More, 2009).

Institutional factors at the level of private business can also be counterproductive. In the United States, during the energy crisis of the 1970s, pipeline operators signed take-or-pay contracts, which required them to pay a penalty if they did not transport and market gas from a producer. The result was that when gas prices dropped, surplus capacity continued to flood the market, keeping prices artificially low (Blanchard, 2021; Bradley, 2018).

Finally, institutional factors at the level of international politics can also have an effect. This was the case with Russia, as NATO countries repeatedly tried to stymie their pipeline construction efforts using boycotts and embargoes (Perović, 2017).

4.4.6 Ecological feasibility

Ecological factors aided the construction of pipelines in some cases, where they or other petroleum production and transport infrastructure were being built on land that was not seen as particularly ecologically valuable (Blanchard, 2021), or when the fuels they transported could displace other more polluting fuels (Blanchard, 2021; Chow, 2015; Liu, 2013). Pipelines can have negative environmental impacts, including pollution, leaks, and oil spills and blow-outs (Blanchard, 2021; Chow, 2015; Falola, 2008; More, 2009; Roxo, 2014), and are associated with environmental harms from upstream fossil fuel production and downstream consumption (Bott, 2004). However, these have not translated into significant impediments for pipeline construction, unless they inspired environmental protest movements or environmental regulations (see Sections 4.3.4 and 4.3.5, respectively).

4.4.7 Application to CO₂ pipelines

Table 3 discusses the applicability of the enablers and constraints discussed above to CO₂ pipelines. Many are largely inapplicable. Geophysical feasibility of CO₂ pipelines, for example, pertains to availability of both pore space, and of steel and other metals; neither of which are currently major constraints on pipeline construction. The applicability of technological factors is similarly limited, since CO₂ pipelines are already largely a solved technological problem (Wallace et al., 2015), and the ability to produce the necessary materials is now widespread. Technological choke-points, like those that occurred when oil shipment routes were disrupted and spurred pipeline investment, are also less relevant for CO₂ pipelines, since there are few viable competing options for large-scale CO₂ transportation.

Economic issues are much more relevant. The lack of a sufficient market for CO₂ is an impediment to the construction of more pipelines. As was the case with natural gas, CO₂ pipeline networks might benefit from the establishment of strong niche applications for the product. Technologies like enhanced oil recovery have already led to a major CO₂ pipeline buildout in the United States, and might do so elsewhere as well. This, however, comes with political hurdles, as well as questions as to its real value in mitigating climate change if the ultimate effect is to produce more fossil fuels (Chailleux, 2020). Supply and demand coordination is another important problem, since CO₂, like natural gas, is difficult to store. Supply shortages of CO₂ will be less likely to cause an economic crisis—and thus spur policy change—than supply shortages of energy commodities. The result could be a CO₂ pipeline system and CO₂ transportation market in which perennial overcapacity, under-capacity, or monopolism interferes with the smooth functioning of carbon markets.

Institutional factors are also important, for related reasons. Establishing rights-of-way [possibly requiring the use of eminent domain (National Petroleum Council, 2019)], coordinating diverse businesses and other actors, contending with local opposition, dealing with issues of pipeline access and natural monopoly, regulating for safety and environmental impact, all pose challenging policy questions, for which there is a real risk of getting the answers wrong. Perverse policy incentives could slow the development of the CO₂ transport system, or accelerate it at the cost of safety, environmental responsibility, or democratic input. Some of these issues are particularly acute for CO₂ pipelines, which carry unique risks, especially the chance of large-scale leakage, which could have fatal consequences for anyone living nearby. These risks, which do not exist in the same way for fossil fuel pipelines, could make CO₂ pipelines face even more political and legal challenges than the historical pipelines we discuss above.

At minimum, creating effective policies will require the expenditure of significant political capital, for a sector that probably has less political impetus than the fossil fuel sector. The military does not use CO₂; consumers do not depend on it to heat their homes; and, absent a much broader global legitimation of carbon markets (possibly including border carbon adjustments), CO₂ will be much less important in balance of trade issues than fossil fuels are. There might, however, be some scope for political feedbacks pushing policymakers to further enable rapid CO₂ pipeline construction, through the growth of CO₂ capturing industries and their associated lobbying capabilities.

Sociocultural risks facing CO₂ are similar to those facing fossil fuel pipelines. Due to some of the risks we have already discussed above, public opposition to CO₂ pipeline rights-of-way already exists, and has become a major impediment to their construction (Splitter, 2022). Competitors (including competing CDR methods, such as biochar producers or tree-planters) might also lobby against CO₂ pipelines, just as coal and railroad interests lobbied against fossil fuel pipelines. And other affected industries might also express concerns about how this infrastructure affects their interests. It is possible that these constraints could be offset by political support for CO₂ pipelines as green infrastructure. Thus far, however, opposition has been more prominent. Given that the political support for CO₂ pipelines should be motivated by environmental concerns, it is very problematic that environmental activism is already having the opposite effect on their rate of construction.

CO₂ pipelines began commercial construction in the 1970s, so the technology has about 55 years of history. Oil and natural gas pipelines began commercial construction about 100 years earlier, so recent buildouts of these technologies have benefitted from an additional 100 years of experience compared to CO₂ pipelines today. Of the three historical national build-outs of fossil fuel pipelines which meet the threshold needed for 1 Gt of CO₂ sequestration capacity, two have occurred within the past 30 years. This provides another caveat to our findings: CO₂ pipelines have a shorter history today than fossil fuel pipelines did when they had their most rapid growth. Future technological improvements might thus further facilitate rapid CO₂ pipeline construction.

5 Conclusion

Our findings suggest the following answers to our four research questions introduced in Section 1:

• How big will future CO₂ pipeline networks have to be to reach or approach gigaton-scale CO₂ removals?

  The three sources we use for estimates of future CO₂ pipeline networks (Larson et al., 2021; Pitt-Ridge et al., 2023; Tumara et al., 2024) suggest that CO₂ sequestration on the order of hundreds of megatons will require pipeline networks on the order of tens of thousands of kilometers. For gigaton-scale removals, hundreds of thousands of kilometers of pipeline will be required. These sources all project pipeline networks of this scale being built by 2050—a 25 year period from most of their starting years in 2025.

• What are the fastest national build-outs of fossil fuel pipelines that have been achieved in the historical record?

  Historical pipeline build-outs over 25-year periods exceed the rate of CO₂ pipeline construction in the sources cited above. Historically, three national pipeline construction buildouts have exceeded 100,000 km of pipeline constructed in 25 years. Fifteen historical 25-year national pipeline buildouts exceed 8,000 km—a rough benchmark that might be in line with 100 Mt of sequestration capacity.

• Is a pipeline build-out enabling the transportation and sequestration of one gigaton or more of CO₂ feasible in light of historical precedents?

  Only a handful of national pipeline buildouts are in line with the pipeline network length likely required for gigaton-scale carbon removals. Other historical pipeline buildouts are consistent with a scale of CO₂ pipeline construction that would enable multiple hundreds of megatons of carbon capture. Global fossil fuel pipeline construction could enable multiple gigatons. We conclude that it is feasible for major countries to build CO₂ pipeline networks enabling gigaton-scale CO₂ removal, but that this would be a major undertaking requiring leadership by large countries, or a large number of smaller countries building pipelines in concert. On the global scale, we conclude that CO₂ pipeline network lengths sufficient for gigatons of carbon capture are well within precedents established by the fossil fuel industry. They would, however, be an enormous undertaking, amounting to a significant percentage of the total rate of fossil fuel pipeline construction in a given year.

• What societal enablers and constraints affected past fossil fuel pipeline build-outs, and to what extent might we expect these to apply to future CO₂ pipeline build-outs?

  The most important constraints on rapid pipeline construction that apply to CO₂ pipelines are economic constraints (including resource constraints), institutional constraints (including policy challenges), and sociocultural constraints (including public opposition). The most important enablers for oil and gas pipelines were economic and institutional, with oil demand and policy incentives to provide secure sources (or exports) of energy proving particularly decisive in overcoming the obstacles mentioned above. Unfortunately, many of these enablers are less relevant for CO₂ pipelines than they are for oil and gas pipelines. Institutional enablers are a particularly important gap, since there are fewer reasons for states to support CO₂ pipeline construction than there are reasons to support pipelines carrying energy commodities.

In supportive political, social, and economic contexts, pipeline construction does not appear to be a major impediment restricting feasible levels of CO₂ removal. Ensuring a supportive context, however, depends on overcoming large social, political, and economic hurdles. Establishing sufficient supply and demand for captured CO₂ to justify pipeline construction might itself depend on sufficient pipeline capacity, creating a chicken and egg problem, and, even after CO₂ markets are successfully created, matching fluctuating supply and demand in a way that balances the interests and influence of different actors in the CO₂ supply chain could be not just a technological and economic problem, but also a political one.

Historically, these challenges have been overcome due to the societal importance of fossil fuels—particularly during major crises such as the Second World War.

A similar crisis may not spur the construction of CO₂ pipelines in the same way, since CO₂ is essentially a waste product rather than a critically-important energy and industrial commodity (Buck, 2020). One solution to this could be leveraging the material uses that CO₂does have, for example for enhanced oil recovery. This, however, invites a “faustian bargain” (Hansson et al., 2022); counting on the fossil fuel industry to become a net-remover of CO₂ from the atmosphere rather than a net-contributor. The economic and political plausibility of this would be a good subject for future research.

The history of fossil fuel pipelines suggests some approaches that might enhance the feasibility of rapidly building CO₂ pipelines. In many places, natural gas developed from a waste product which was coproduced with oil and flared by companies uninterested in selling it, to a critical energy commodity. This was in many cases the result of specific policies (especially flaring bans) that made natural gas pipeline construction the most economically attractive option for the oil industry. A similar CCS mandate, defining CO₂ as a useful (or at least profitable) byproduct that must be sequestered rather than vented, might have a similar effect. These measures could be made more politically feasible by the development of a large enough CO₂ transportation industry with its own lobbying arm.

Although CO₂ and fossil fuel pipelines share several similarities, CO₂ has a different set of physical and economic characteristics which will mean that CO₂ pipelines will likely not develop in the exact same way as oil and gas pipelines. Besides the differences discussed in Section 4.4, right-of-way allowances for CO₂ pipelines may be more difficult to establish because of the unique health hazards of a CO₂ leak, compared to the environmental hazards of an oil leak, for example. It is difficult to assess how each difference in fossil fuel and CO₂ pipelines would impact our results. Indeed, some characteristics unique to CO₂ pipelines may allow for faster scaling while others might slow development compared to fossil fuel pipelines. In future work, individual enablers and constraints may be examined in more detail. This analysis is a starting point for comparing these types of pipelines and the precedence of fast pipeline buildouts.

Future work on CO₂ pipelines would benefit from more precise and geographically specific estimates of pipeline requirements for CDR. Also, despite the close correspondence between CO₂ and fossil fuel pipelines, CO₂ has a different set of physical and economic characteristics from fossil fuels, which will mean that CO₂ pipelines will not develop in exactly the same way as fossil fuel pipelines. We have tried to account for this, particularly in Section 4.4, but it does impose a limitation on our findings. It would also be valuable to conduct similar analyses to this one for other forms of CO₂ transportation, especially shipping, and for scenarios in which transportation limitations change the spatial deployment patterns of CO₂ removal systems. Finally, as more precise and granular estimates are developed for how CO₂ pipeline networks might scale with CO₂ removal capacity, it will be useful to revisit this kind of research in a way that considers the contributions of pipeline buildouts on different scales, rather than relying on just two benchmarks of 1 Mt and 1 Gt, as we have done here.

In this article, we show that the largest pipeline buildouts of the past are aligned with future needs for carbon removal. Pipeline networks, however, are megaprojects, which involve technological complexity and large up-front costs, and are typically associated with institutional and societal conflict. They have overcome these key barriers in the past thanks to strong enabling conditions, including powerful political and economic imperatives to ensure a durable supply of energy commodities. To be built at the rate that is necessary, CO₂ pipelines would require a similarly strong set of enabling conditions in place over the next 25 years.

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