The Texas Railroad Commission (RRC) has approved the state’s first new carbon-capture project since it assumed primacy for Class VI injection wells in December 2025.
ExxonMobil’s Rose CCS project southwest of Beaumont in Jefferson County was approved by a 2-1 vote of the RRC on September 16. The project’s three wells would permanently store about 4 million MT per year of carbon dioxide (CO2) over 13 years, or about 52 million MT overall. ExxonMobil said the project would recover CO2 from industrial sources in the region, with an 18-mile pipeline connecting to the storage area.
The RRC’s application tracker, last updated September 22, details the status of 20 projects, with different phases of the same project listed separately. The only projects listed as Approved (green bar in chart below) involve Oxy Low Carbon Ventures’ Brown Pelican site in Ector County. The initial Class VI permits were approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in May 2025, before the RRC gained primacy, and an amended application was approved by the commission in August 2026.
The projects not yet approved fall into several categories (blue bars). A project noted as Under Review means the RRC is evaluating its technical, geological and engineering data. A project in the Draft Permit stage is drafting permit and notice documents for the public-comment period. A project listed as Pending RAD Response means the operator has a pending request for additional documents from the RRC. A project classified as Draft Doc6 is drafting the hearing packet for the RRC’s Hearings Division. A project with a Hearing status means that its application is currently with the Hearings Division. (The permits for the Rose CCS project take effect 45 days after approval, so that project’s status is still listed as Hearing.)
In addition, the tracker shows that four projects have been put on hold by the operator (yellow bar) and two have been withdrawn (red bar).
Source: Texas Railroad Commission
