Regulators deny late requests to delay carbon dioxide pipeline decisi…

In a split vote, the Iowa Utilities Board declined to solicit more evidence before it decides whether to issue a pipeline permit to Summit Carbon Solutions, according to a Thursday board order.

In recent months, the company has more than doubled the number of ethanol producers to which its system would connect and added 340 miles of pipe — a roughly 50% increase. It indicated in March it would file 14 new permit requests for that expansion with the IUB while its initial permit application was still pending.

The IUB is poised to make a decision for the first permit, and pipeline opponents seized on the expansion to make an 11th-hour bid to delay the decision. The Sierra Club of Iowa argued that the evidentiary record should be reopened and the permit applications consolidated, which would potentially elongate the process for many months.

The Iowa Farm Bureau Federation did not ask for a consolidation but sought to reopen the record to determine…