INDIANAPOLIS — Legislation that would allow companies to take private land in Indiana to build pipelines carrying carbon dioxide is advancing in the Statehouse as part of a wider push supporters say is needed to prepare the state for greenhouse gas caps.

A consumer advocacy group calls the bill, which cleared the state Senate on Thursday, the latest in a series of concessions to the coal industry in coal-dependent Indiana.

Supporters of the pipeline bill argue that it will move along Gov. Mitch Daniels' plans to put Indiana at the forefront of so-called "clean coal" technologies that would aid the state in the anticipated era of costly controls on the gas blamed largely for global warming.

Sen. Beverly Gard, R-Greenfield, said her bill is needed to open the way for a 6-mile pipeline crucial to a $2 billion plant a group of private investors wants to build in southwestern Indiana to turn coal into synthetic natural gas.

"This is about jobs. This is about producing the power that we need in this state and it's about using Indiana coal and keeping lots of people employed," she told fellow senators before they voted 36-12 to approve the bill.

The planned pipeline would run from the proposed coal-gasification plant near the Ohio River town of Rockport to the Kentucky state line. It would then connect with a pipeline network crossing several states, picking up carbon dioxide produced by similar plants.

That network would pipe the gas blamed largely for climate change to Texas, where it would be injected in liquid form into oil fields to drive out additional amounts of oil.

Gard's bill is the latest effort by state lawmakers to support the estimated $2 billion plant that Indiana Gasification LLC wants to build along the Ohio River.

Last session, lawmakers approved a bill allowing the state's finance authority to negotiate long-term contracts to buy and sell synthetic natural gas from the proposed plant.

Daniels said in signing that bill into law that the plant would save Indiana's natural gas users billions of dollars by ensuring a steady supply of synthetic natural gas free of the price fluctuations of the natural gas market.

Kerwin Olson, the program director for the Citizens Action Coalition of Indiana, said the Legislature's various actions on behalf of the Rockport plant are aimed solely at supporting the state's coal industry.

He said the pipeline bill and a second bill Gard sponsored this session that addressed the costs of storing underground some of the carbon dioxide produced by the state's coal-fired power plants are "nothing more than instruments designed to sustain the coal industry."

Gard said she proposed the second bill simply to begin educating lawmakers about the costs and other issues the state will face under climate controls expected to hit Indiana hard in coming years because the state gets more than 95 percent of its power from coal.

Although Gard said her pipeline bill is intended only to support the Rockport plant, it would allow companies to use eminent domain — the power to claim private land — anywhere in Indiana. That element raised concerns among some senators, including fellow Republican Sen. Mike Delph of Carmel.

Delph told his colleagues before they voted to send the bill on to the Indiana House that he strongly opposes giving a private entity the power to claim private land, even if landowners are compensated for it as the bill specifies.

"This is about private property rights. These property owners have a right to try to get top dollar for their property," he said, calling eminent domain an "awesome power."

Gard noted that public utilities already have the authority to use eminent domain to advance their projects. She said the concerns about extending that power to a private entity not regulated by the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission are overstated and that eminent domain is typically used only as a last resort.

The bill's chief sponsor in the House, state Rep. Kreg Battles, D-Vincennes, said he's optimistic about its chances in the chamber despite some lawmakers' sensitivity to opening what he called a "Pandora's box" by expanding the use of eminent domain.

Battles, whose district is in southwestern Indiana's coal country, said the bill could lead the way to the state's coal-fired power plants someday using pipelines as well to get rid of their carbon dioxide under climate controls.

He said he can envision a day when carbon dioxide from those plants is either piped to oil states or to sites where it would be pumped far underground to keep it out of the atmosphere.

"That is at least worth discussion and exploration. I don't paint it as a now — it's down the road and we should be thinking about those things," Battles said.



Copyright 2010 The Associated Press.