Posted on 08/21/2009 2:48:01 PM PDT by decimon
PIERRE, S.D. - The South Dakota Board of Minerals and Environment voted unanimously Thursday to approve an air quality permit for the proposed Hyperion Center, which would be the first new oil refinery built in the United States since 1976.
The long-awaited decision moves the Dallas, Texas-based Hyperion a major step closer to starting construction in rural Union County.
The location is in extreme southeast South Dakota, across the Missouri River from Nebraska and near the border with Iowa. The nearest Nebraska towns are Newcastle and Ponca.
Hyperion executive Preston Phillips said the permit allows the firm to proceed with contingency plans that include securing a source of crude oil from Alberta, Canada, lining up construction contracts and solidifying commitments from investors for the $10 billion project, which would be one of the largest private investments in U.S. history.
Opponents are expected to fight the decision in court.
(Excerpt) Read more at journalstar.com ...
I believe this was the one that was planned in Kansas until the almight Sebelius vetoed two coal power plants for glo-bull warming reasons and decided to abandon the state.
The question remains, will the refinery use petroleum from the Bakken Shale of North Dakota/Montana, or is it devoted exclusively to oil from Canada’s tar sands region?
Is there a pipeline east from Bakken? Don't think so but I don't know.
While motoring across Montana one month ago, at a Rest Stop on I-94, I spoke with a woman who told me her husband was working on a pipeline being laid across eastern Montana into SoDak, to bring Canadian oil into SoDak. She was driving to meet him, with their twin children.
Whether it will get its feedstock from tar sands or Bakken will greatly determine the design of the crude units. Tar sands feedstock is high sulfur content, requiring sulfur recovery units. The sulfur is a byproduct sold to chemical and rubber plants, so there is a revenue stream from that. It also requires some higher metallurgy.
Canadian oil. Could be from the Canadian part of the Bakken field but that's not North Dakota/Montana.
This ain’t over. The enviro-wackos are well-funded, and they will try to tie this up in court indefinitely. I hope they fail and free enterprise (what’s left of it) wins.
I could have sworn that the refinery was to be built on an Indian reservation. As I recall, the Indian tribes were all for it because it would bring some two thousand jobs to the impoverished region.
That would be good — maybe that will put a few legal wrinkles into the enviro-wackos lawsuit plans.
There were plans for a refinery here in Arizona several years ago, but haven’t heard anything about it for a couple of years. I suppose the enviro-wackos won out.
If the whackos win, I guess we could just refine the oil in Alberta and ship you the finished product. An environmentalist win means more jobs and prosperity in Canada. Woo-hoo.
Eventually, when almost all jobs in the US are outsourced, because virtually no economic activity is allowed here, then there eventually won’t be anymore money in the US (that’s worth anything) to buy things with.
At that point, the US becomes a washed up turd world cesspool, ignored by the rest of the world.
Your country is tying itself in knots on the alter of environmentalism and political correctness. You have a racist president for the first time since LBJ, and no one will say so because he is black. He is eviscerating the country. I fear they will be nothing left.
Maybe Sarah Palin can submit a “friend of the court” paper?
Amicus Sariae.
From deeper inside the article: Hyperion's lead attorney highlighted the state-of-the-art pollution control technology for the refinery, which would process 400,000 barrels of Canadian tar sands crude per day into low-sulfur gas, diesel and jet fuel.
bttt
The cite elicited some comments that seemed to imply that the Bakken was “hot air”. That is incredibly far from the truth. Big players like EOG are hard at work on the Bakken, and little players like KOG with large acreage holdings have had success and are a tempting target for the big guys. Recent posts on FR have indicated that the Bakken is the largest strike since the Alaska find of three decades ago. The problem, it seems to me, is getting the oil to the refinery.
I think that comment was about the company, PetroBakken. The commenter did not justify the hot air claim.
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