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 ...
Tribe breaks ground on refinery
http://oilpatchdispatch.areavoices.com/2013/05/09/tribe-breaks-ground-on-refinery/
The tribes held a ceremonial groundbreaking for the Thunder Butte Petroleum Services Refinery, which will be constructed in four phases over two years. It will have the capacity to process up to 20,000 barrels per day of Bakken crude that is produced on the Fort Berthold Reservation.
Construction is expected to begin in August on the first phase, a truck-to-rail crude oil transloading facility that later ties into the refinery, said Rich Mayer, CEO of Thunder Butte Petroleum Services.
The transloading facility, which involves building storage tanks and a connection to a Canadian Pacific line near the property, would load and ship one 120-car train every four days, said Kurt Swenson, vice president of Corval Group, a consultant involved with engineering on the project.
The rail facility will be operational by early 2014 while the refinery is being constructed.
The tribe is finalizing a contract with a company called Chemex LLC, which will construct a modular refinery in Bakersfield, Calif., and ship it to North Dakota to be assembled.
Once the contract is finalized, construction is estimated to take 18 to 24 months, Mayer said.
Initially the refinery will produce diesel and sell the byproducts. After the final phase, the refinery will have the ability to refine more diesel and also some gasoline, Mayer said.
The refinery will provide 300 local construction jobs and 75 to 100 full-time jobs after it’s operational, officials said.
...
The refinery is off of Highway 23 on 469 acres northwest of Makoti the tribe bought from Bernice Nelson of Minot, who used to farm on the property with her husband. Makoti, which had a population of 154 in 2010, is about 35 miles east of New Town.
The tribe has contributed $40 million toward the transloading facility portion of the project.
The approximate $450 million total cost will be financed with bonds, said Daniel Eastman, managing director of private investment banking firm John W. Loofbourrow Associates Inc., who traveled from New York to attend the ceremony.
Great news.
On the refinery subject, I have always wondered why the Iranians pissed away so much money on Nuclear war when they could have built their own refinery.
If they were a nuclear power, they could claim all the oil in the Persian Gulf region, or so some of them think...
BTW, they have 9 refineries of their own and have for some time. They have been expanding their gasoline production from those refineries for a while.
Guess whom the next LaRaza is ...
Same rationale as Tribal Casinos: they’re just doing what the enviro-nazis and the administration have made impossible in the U.S.
Halleluia!
I must say, sincerely, that you really know a lot about this topic.....thanks for all these articles, and your follow up posts.
Good for them. This will make the environazi’s heads explode.
“Thunder Butte Petroleum Services Refinery”
Michelle Obama must be upset that there’s a refinery named after her.
If they build this, I believe it will be the first new refinery built in the USA in over 30 years!
Now, if the Tribe could just get their firearms back from the benevolent and caring government.
Oh no! Native Americans doing something that will shock “environmentalists”. Just shows that environmental extremists can’t trust anyone.
When was the last refinery built in the United States?
http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=29&t=6
There were a total of 144 operable petroleum refineries in the United States as of January 1, 2012.
The “newest” refinery in the United States began operating in 2008 in Douglas, Wyoming. However, the newest significant (or sophisticated) refinery began operating in 1977 in Garyville, Louisiana.
Capacity has also been added to existing refineries through upgrades or new construction. The most recent examples include:
In 1998, Orion Refinery massively upgraded and reopened a refinery in Norco, Louisiana, which was a small, simple refinery that originally opened in 1967. (It is now owned by Valero.)
Valero opened a “new” and very sophisticated refinery in 1983 in Corpus Christi, Texas, on the site of a simple refinery that originally opened in 1975.
The newest refineries currently operating in the United States are listed at the link:
From what I read a while back, the amount of product they put out will barely take care of the fuel needs of the local area and have almost zero impact on the overall fuel situation nationally. As to the nitrogen fertilizer plant they’re going to build, let’s hope it’s further out of town than the one that just popped in TX. That was a HUGE explosion. One the company said could NEVER happen.
Correct, at 15,000 BPD it will be one of the 10 smallest refineries in the US.
http://www.mharefinery.com/about-us/
http://www.eia.gov/petroleum/refinerycapacity/table3.pdf
Gold Star analysis of the day...
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