New US refinery could come online in 2014

04 June 2008 23:42  [Source: ICIS news]

HOUSTON (ICIS news)--A US refinery could come online as early as 2014 in Union County in South Dakota, the chairman of the county government said on Wednesday.

If completed, it would be the first US refinery built in more than 30 years. Hyperion Resources, based in Dallas, would build the refinery.

 “I would say, if everything works perfectly, I would talk about in a perfect world, they could start breaking ground in 2010 and have four years of construction, so in 2014-2015 maybe things would start moving,” said Union County commission chairman Doyle Karpen. In March, he was part of a unanimous majority on the commission that approved a rezoning proposal.

On Tuesday, slightly more than half of the county's voters approved rezoning more than 3,300 acres of land to help make way for Hyperion to build the refinery.

Groundbreaking could begin within two years on the Hyperion Energy Center, which the company said would eventually be a 400,000 bbl/day refinery turning Canadian crude oil into gasoline.

The company also said the construction would lead to creating 1,800 permanent jobs for the area.

Karpen said the construction would be a boon to Union County, which currently has a property tax assessment of $1.95b (€1.27b). The plant’s taxable property value is expected to settle around $2b-$4b, Karpen said.

Another reason the measure passed, Karpen said, was the possibility of increasing gasoline supplies to rural areas of South Dakota.

“We’re kind of on the end of those pipelines,” Karpen said. “We’re kind of like the last guys to get a drink out of a bucket of water, and sometimes they don’t leave too much in the bucket for you.”

However, some local leaders were not so optimistic.

Jon Hunter, publisher of the nearby Madison Daily Leader, wrote in a Wednesday editorial that he does not see the plant opening until after 2014, “and there is certainly the possibility that it may never open at all”, depending on the level of resistance from local environmentalists.

Hunter wrote many of the refinery’s opponents “will be vocal and determined to stop the project”.

Karpen said the voters who cast their ballots against the rezoning proposal were largely motivated by environmental concerns. Opponents, he said had “no experience with refineries or anything”, and it was not immediately clear to him if they would rally against the refinery’s construction in the next steps of the permitting process.

A message left with Jason Quam, president of Citizens Against Oil Pollution, a local group opposed to the refinery, was not immediately returned on Wednesday.

Messages left with Hyperion Resources were not immediately returned.

($1 = €0.65)

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