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Posted on 05/10/2013 5:59:05 AM PDT by thackney
The Three Affiliated Tribes have broken ground for a $450 million oil refinery on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in northwestern North Dakota
The Thunder Butte Petroleum Services Refinery will be constructed in four phases over two years. A ceremonial groundbreaking was held Wednesday, after more than a decade of planning, according to The Forum and the Minot Daily News. Construction is expected to begin in August.
“We grew up poor. We were lucky if we had a pair of clean overalls,” Tribal Chairman Tex Hall said. “But our parents made sure we went to school and got educated. They did the best they could for us. They didn’t know we’d have this oil and gas resource, but now we do. It’s our responsibility to manage it, and we are.”
The refinery is named for one of the most sacred buttes on the reservation, according to Hall.
(Excerpt) Read more at fuelfix.com ...
So, how long would it take to get approval of a “real” refinery? It’s been 25 or 30 years since a new “real” refinery has been put up. The existing ones just keep trying to upgrade and produce despite the ever increasing BS from the epa and enviro-wak-a-doodles. Summer blend my butt.
I guess the “no new refineries” claim doesn’t mean anything to me. In those same 3 decades, we have expanded and upgraded our existing refinery to the point where the average output per refinery has doubled from 59.4 MBPD to 120.3 MBPD.
Number and Capacity of Petroleum Refineries
http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pnp_cap1_dcu_nus_a.htm
We now produce more refined product than the country uses. Consequently we import more crude oil than we need and export the surplus refined products helping our trade balance keeping more jobs in the US.
At this point, building additional refineries will only result in either exporting more refined product, or shutting down existing refineries. We do not have a shortage of refineries for the total US.
I have an understanding of the oil/gas industry. What you are asking about is forecasting politics.
I suggest asking someone with a more appropriate skill set:
The existing ones just keep trying to upgrade and produce despite the ever increasing BS from the epa and enviro-wak-a-doodles.
They do more than try. In those same 3 decades we have doubled the output of the average US refinery.
Ah yes. The Great Karnak. By try, I meant dealing with the epa. An arduous task for sure.
I used to work for a company that mainly designed refinery units, specializing in the heavy oil end but also did complete refineries for places like Brazil and other countries.
The cost of adding 250 MBPD to an existing refinery of the same size was about 40% the total cost of building a 250 MBPD refinery on a completely empty location. The infrastructure to support the increased output is so much cheaper than building it from scratch.
This reservation is different then the ones I’ve seen in So Dal. It’s cleaner and you do not see the alcoholism of the lakota.
Most of the people here have jobs.
Roger that. I worked at KSC and we constantly had to mod and upgrade the LOX and LH2 storage/supply facilities. Sure beat the cost of building new ones. Especially the dewars for storage. Saturn program era builds. But they worked.
For example:
An existing older 250 MBPD plant could be upgraded to 300 MBPD plant and only build a 200 MPD new expansion. At the same time, the expansions could target more valuable fuels than what was the greatest profit several decades ago.
It is certainly more complicated than that, but it does help explain the point why expansions can be much cheaper than new grassroot construction.
LOL!!!
Waiting for the Enviro tribe to come out claiming it is being built on “sacred Indian burial grounds” in an attempt to stop it!
Trespassing EPA inspectors will be scalped on sight...
It’s taken awhile, but it looks like one tribe is getting the last laugh on those who put their ancestors on that reservation.
This will be another financial boondoggle and probable environmental disaster as well.
The tribal government is corrupt, inept, capricious, unaccountable.
It’s like the BIA “Cobell” settlement of the past several years and the more recent Pigford reparations case.
The government backs a preferred status group, bends rules, pours money in, then the whole thing blows up.
Fingers are pointed, charges of bigotry and discrimination are levelled—and taxpayers are forced to pay for the failure and subsequent cleanup as well.
Thanks for the information. I think the “no new refineries” thing is that the environmentalists have been delaying every new refinery and forcing the improvement of existing facilities. That is good that the latter occurred, but it certainly wasn’t the outcome they wanted.
And produced cleaner fuels, too.
Ouch !
Drilling and building refineries....should have been done decades ago.
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