Near Tiger Stadium, there's a plan to dig into Louisiana's energy future.

Within walking distance of Tiger Stadium, LSU researchers are about to dig a very deep hole that they believe will help lead to Louisiana's energy future. But unlike Saturday nights in Death Valley, not everyone is a fan.

The plan involves drilling thousands of feet down to create a carbon sequestration learning and testing well as the state positions itself as a hub of the emerging technology. For the project's backers, it will help answer crucial questions about the viability of large-scale carbon capture and sequestration, a key component of strategies to reduce emissions driving climate change.

Others see it as part of a questionable partnership between higher education and the fossil fuel industry when Louisiana should instead be pushing harder to transition away from oil and gas.

That, officials involved in the plan say, is an admirable goal, but also unrealistic in a state historically dependent upon the oil-and-gas and petrochemical industries. The path forward requires a more balanced approach involving renewables and fossil fuels, they say.

The project will see LSU drill the well by 2025 at its Petroleum Engineering Research, Training and Testing Lab, known to generations of students by the old oil derrick that stands next to it in the campus's southwestern corner. It will make the lab unique in the nation for its array of capabilities on a university campus, the project's lead researcher says, and is part of a broader effort at LSU and other Louisiana universities to help usher in the energy transition.

Carbon sequestration involves injecting carbon dioxide highly compressed to a near liquid state, known as ''super critical,'' permanently into underground formations and keeping it from escaping into the air and affecting the climate. But the method has generated controversy over its long-term effectiveness, the impact of required pipeline infrastructure and potential risks some fear for drinking water aquifers.

The 7,900-foot-deep carbon sequestration well at LSU will not inject carbon dioxide into the subsurface under Louisiana's flagship university. The well won't have the openings in the well casing nor the state permit to do such injections, LSU and state permitting officials said. LSU researchers instead will circulate ''super-critical'' carbon dioxide into the well bore only and later remove it. LSU researchers carry out similar circulation for traditional oil-and gas research at the lab's two existing wells.

But the new well hole, which will be 13 inches in diameter at its widest and have a horizontal section below 7,000 feet, will allow them to test and develop safety and monitoring technologies, understand carbon dioxide's behavior down the well, and use field conditions to validate the predictions of computer models and experiments.

About half of the roughly $8 million well and related infrastructure is being paid for through LSU's participation in the federally funded $50 million H2theFuture project and with state dollars. The rest is being covered with in-kind oil field services, design and drilling help from Halliburton and ExxonMobil, LSU officials said.

''I believe that geologic sequestration of CO2 is one of the essential components of the energy transition, and we're not going to get there as quickly as we need to if we don't employ that technology,'' said Karsten Thompson, an LSU petroleum engineering professor and the project leader.

Darryl Malek-Wiley, a senior field representative for the Sierra Club in Louisiana, argued carbon sequestration offers a false promise and believes LSU should be spending its time and money exploring other energy technologies, like solar power.

''We feel that carbon capture technology is the wrong path to move forward into the future. It's a risky technology. It's not been proven at this scale any place in the world,'' he said.

'All-of-the-above approach'

Billions of dollars from the Biden administration are going toward grant programs to finance research and the application of carbon sequestration and other methods to slow the impact of climate change, which poses an existential threat to coastal Louisiana due to sea level rise.

H2theFuture is a consortium of four state universities trying to create a clean hydrogen economy that will allow fossil fuel-reliant Louisiana industries to cut their carbon emissions. Under that program, the University of New Orleans recently opened a research hub for green hydrogen, which is produced with renewable energy.

But some industry and academic experts see carbon capture as one of the more attainable bridge technologies until alternative fuels can be used at a large enough scale.

In comments made shortly after he was hired in late July, Michael Mazzola, the lead of LSU's Future Use of Energy in Louisiana grant program, staked out this view. He said he believes the push for the energy transition must have an ''all-of- the-above'' approach that sustains the oil, gas and petrochemical industries and the jobs and benefits they provide.

Another consortium of universities and industries, FUEL, won an up to $160 million ''innovation engine'' grant from the National Science Foundation to ''futureproof'' Louisiana's fossil fuel-reliant industries with less carbon-intensive energy sources.

The prospect of carbon capture, however, has proven controversial in Louisiana, where 65 carbon sequestration wells for 26 projects are proposed due to the state's unique geology and proximity to industries needing ways to meet emissions goals within the next 25 years.

Air Products' proposal to store carbon emissions under Lake Maurepas from a planned hydrogen plant in Ascension Parish has stirred fervent opposition. Livingston Parish residents, boaters, crabbers, fishermen and others worry about aquatic wildlife, boater safety, drinking water aquifers and what would be injected underground besides carbon dioxide.

While the state Department of Energy and Natural Resources has authorized several wells to explore underlying geology, including for Air Products, the agency has not yet approved any carbon sequestration wells. Several are under review.

Critics say the technology remains unproven and that a few high-profile breakdowns have served as warnings. They note that it would further crisscross Louisiana's vulnerable coast with new pipelines while continuing the use of fossil fuels.

In February 2020, a major break of a carbon dioxide line near Satartia, Mississippi, hospitalized at least 45 people and forced 200 to evacuate from an asphyxiating gas cloud that hung along the ground. The lingering gas killed the engines of nearby vehicles that were starved of oxygen needed for combustion, according to an investigation by the federal pipeline regulator.

The investigation determined heavy rains undermined the soil around the 24inch Delhi Line, causing it to break. Regulators faulted the owner of the line, Denbury, for not anticipating the soil stability issues, underestimating the size of the carbon dioxide plume from a leak and not foreseeing that the plume could reach Satartia.

In Louisiana on April 3, the Lake Charles Pump Station for Denbury's 24-inch Green Line, which runs between the Galveston, Texas, area and Donaldsonville, released an estimated 6.3 million cubic feet of carbon dioxide over about two hours.

The leak from a faulty equipment door forced a nearly two-hour shelter-inplace order for Calcasieu Parish residents living within a quarter-mile of the Bankens Road station before the release was controlled, according to state and federal reports. The cause remains under investigation.

The Sierra Club's Malek-Wiley also pointed to a remediation order the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued on Sept. 19 to Archer Daniels Midland Co. over injected fluid from carbon sequestration in Decatur, Illinois, that migrated beyond its authorized storage zone underground. EPA officials say the fluid is about a mile below drinking water wells and doesn't pose a risk to them.

'A unique facility'

Due to LSU's location, history and alumni base, the university maintains a close financial tie and cultural affinity with the oil and gas industry. It has taken the position that the university and the state's petroleum-based industries are best positioned to chart the path away from carbon and fossil fuels.

But LSU has also faced criticism over its pursuit of grant dollars, like FUEL and H2theFuture, and the strong input from industrial partners. Thompson said he understands those perceptions, but believes they miss an important point, which is that researchers are trained to find the ''true answer rather than a preconceived notion of the answer.''

''We're a university. We do independent research,'' he added. ''We're not going in assuming we know the answer that all of this is safe. We're here to answer any questions that remain out there.''

The LSU sequestration test well is being designed to answer the kind of safety questions critics like Malek-Wiley are raising, Thompson said.

They include whether sequestered carbon dioxide can find leak paths back to the surface, how carbon dioxide mixed with impurities from industrial processes will affect injected CO2 in its super critical state and how casing alloys stand up to the corrosive nature of carbon dioxide.

''No matter what your viewpoint is, I think this should be viewed as a good thing because it's a unique facility that could help us answer questions that we could not otherwise,'' Thompson said.

Mazzola, the FUEL grant director, pointed out that, in comparison to several years ago, industries want to find a way to decarbonize to stay competitive long term in global markets increasingly seeking carbon-free products to meet their own internal or national requirements.

''If we come up with some answers that are going to be challenging to their business proposition,'' Thompson added, ''that doesn't mean they take the money away. That's exactly why they invested in the research in the first place, to make sure they had really good answers to those questions.''

Mark Richard, Halliburton's president for the Western Hemisphere and an LSU alumnus, said in an LSU statement that hundreds of carbon capture and storage projects are in early development worldwide, but even more will be needed to meet climate commitments by 2050 and beyond.

''Collaboration with educators, researchers and the energy industry will play a critical role to train the future workforce and meet the demand for CO2 sequestration,'' he said. David J. Mitchell can be reached at dmitchell@theadvocate.com.