9/17/26 Kim Monson Show
Tallgrass Converted the 392-Mile Trailblazer Natural Gas Line to Carry Ethanol Plant CO2 to Wyoming
READ IT HERE
APPLE PODCASTS LINK
Start listening at 70:38 – Hour 2 - Hume’s mentioned at 77:00
Sixth generation Nebraska rancher Trent Loos opened with $12 diesel, a number he has been predicting for three weeks while people told him he was nuts. What convinced him it is close was the ExxonMobil refinery in Joliet, Illinois, roughly 6 percent of the Midwest’s refining capacity for gasoline and diesel, which lost power on Sunday and was still down when he came on. Loos said the country has the resources for its own domestic security while depending on other countries for food and fuel, and for fiber most of all, with 87 percent of the world’s textiles made in Asia.
Most of his time went to the CO2 pipelines. Tallgrass Energy converted the 392 mile Trailblazer out of natural gas service and reversed it, so it now carries carbon dioxide captured at Nebraska ethanol plants west to a sequestration hub in southeastern Wyoming, running since November 2025 on an $85 a metric ton federal credit. Loos objects on two grounds. Carbon dioxide kills people, and the line carries it compressed to 2,200 pounds per square inch past a Logan County family (THAT’S US!) living 800 feet away with seven children. Loos believes a rupture there would kill somebody. Capture and injection together also consume twice the energy the ethanol produced. He believes the line will be converted back to gas so the plants make methanol from natural gas instead of corn, leaving the petroleum industry with infrastructure the taxpayer paid for.
He tied that to the farmland, citing $50 billion more in agricultural products imported than exported in 2025 and a projection that cell cultured protein supplies 65 percent of world consumption by 2035. The transmission lines, wind, solar and data centers he fights keep landing on prime farmland, which he calls the build out for factory grown protein.
“We have the resources in the United States for domestic security, but we have forced ourselves into this position where we rely on other countries for food and fuel.”
Trent Loos, Sixth Generation Nebraska Rancher
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE HERE, starts at 70:38, mentioned at 77:00
