Iowa’s Bruce Rastetter has a sixth sense when it comes to making money.
In 1984, according to the Des Moines Register, Rastetter “started feeding hogs on contract…and within two years, 500 head grew to 100,000.”
A decade later, his Heartland Pork was the 12th largest hog farm in the U.S.
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Ten years after that, with Heartland wallowing in debt and low prices, Rastetter sold it and moved on to ethanol.
His timing was nearly perfect. The federal government’s Renewable Fuel Standard was about to ignite a massive ethanol boom.
Later, as that boom faded, “Rastetter…worked out a deal with Thomas H. Lee Partners, which bought 80 percent of Hawkeye Holdings (Rastetter’s ethanol company) investing $312 million,” the same paper reported in 2015.
Ramstetter began investing in global ag and local politicians. Today he’s a top collector of both.
His Summit Agricultural Group reportedly controls 14,000 acres in Iowa, owns livestock operations and Brazilian ethanol businesses and has “spent millions on federal, state and local politics over the past two decades,” the Register reports.
The latter is important, given Summit’s current focus – a 2,000-mile, $4.5-billion carbon pipeline to link more than 30 “biorefineries” in five Midwestern states. The plan is to deliver pressurized carbon dioxide (CO2) to “deep geologic storage locations” in North Dakota.
But not even Rastetter has deep enough pockets to bankroll this pipe dream. Enter his network of politicians and investors.
According to a November 2022 report published by California think tank the Oakland Institute, Summit’s payroll includes general counsel Jess Vilsack, the son of U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack. Summit’s “chief policy officer” is Terry Branstad, Iowa’s former governor.
A May 2022 Securities and Exchange Commission filing lists the biggest investors in the Midwest Carbon Express, Summit’s cheeky name for its pipeline. They include TPG Rise Climate Fund (US$300 million), Continental Resources ($250 million), SK E&S ($110 million), Tiger Infrastructure ($100 million) and Deere & Co., whose “size of its ‘strategic investment’… remains unknown,” the Oakland Institute highlighted.
What also is known is that these investors include some deep ties to fossil fuels and oil-producing giants like Saudi Arabia.
Continental Resources, the Oakland Institute noted, was founded by frack-oil billionaire Harold Hamm and “produces crude oil and natural gas” in Texas, Montana, Oklahoma, Wyoming and North Dakota, the northern terminus of Summit’s pipeline.
Coincidence? Not likely, because, as the report notes, compressed CO2 is an effective tool in “enhanced oil recovery” efforts by frack oil firms to keep their thick crude flowing without reducing oil’s critical role in climate change.
But the really big money in the Summit pipeline effort, and two other competing pipelines, is the taxpayer’s. According to terms included in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, the federal government will pay carbon “sequesters” like Summit $85 per CO2 ton to collect, transport and store it underground.
If the compressed CO2 is used in “enhanced oil recovery” systems, the per-ton rate dips to $60.
Collectively, the Oakland Institute estimates the three CO2 pipelines planned for the Midwest could collect $45 billion in federal guarantees over the next 12 years. Summit’s share of that juicy federal pie is an estimated $12 billion.
But that’s only one slice. An estimated $7 billion in federal “pilot program” and “development” money is also on the CO2 table. Additionally, several state programs could raise the value of each ton of sequestered carbon to a wallet-bulging $250 per ton, three times what is promised today.
And yet, the Oakland Institute argues, almost every penny of this federal program will prop up “polluting industries…[and] delay the transition away from dirty energy…”
Little wonder that ag insiders like Rastetter often move from growing actual hogs to nurturing government-fattened porkers like carbon pipelines. These big pigs, after all, could yield massive profits while greenwashing even more frack oil billions.
– The Farm and Food File is published weekly throughout the U.S. and Canada. Past columns, supporting documents, and contact information are posted at farmandfoodfile.com.
