While most emission reduction initiatives in the U.S. have been halted by partisan gridlock, geologic carbon sequestration has expanded over the past 8 years in North Dakota, a state historically dominated by the interests of the emission-driving coal and oil industries. In this paper, I aim to deploy a scientific analysis of geologic sequestration and a policy evaluation of the administrative changes that led to sequestration’s growth in North Dakota in order to explain its expansion in one of the last places emission-reduction policy would be expected. Using government documents, scientific analyses, and stakeholder perspectives, I find that geologic sequestration’s unique ability to simultaneously increase corporate profit through federal tax breaks and spur oil recovery at exhausted wells drove this expansion, which was made possible by a streamlined permitting process in North Dakota. This streamlining both shortened the site evaluation process to a potentially dangerous extent and sparked an anti-sequestration political shift in neighboring states due to controversial CO2 pipeline projects. Despite these flaws, geologic sequestration’s qualities have poised it as a bipartisan emission-reduction solution with the potential for a rapid nationwide expansion now that Doug Burgum, the architect of North Dakota’s sequestration boom, heads the department charged with permitting sequestration on federal lands.