An oil field became California’s first carbon vault. Who’s responsible if something goes wrong?

Paid to bury carbon Carbon storage doesn’t turn a profit on its own. In May, California’s largest oil producer, California Resources Corp., began burying carbon at Elk Hills, a vast, century-old oil field in rural Kern County. State leaders have championed the Elk Hills project. The Elk Hills project is the first of a joint venture called Carbon TerraVault that CRC formed with New York investor Brookfield Asset Management to pursue its carbon capture projects. For now, the company is injecting carbon at Elk Hills while an environmental lawsuit over the project remains unresolved.