DAKOTA DUNES — The Dakota Valley Business Council sent out a message Monday urging its members to voice their support for the $10 billion, 400,000-barrel-per-day when the state South Dakota Department Department of Environment and Natural Resources’ Board of Minerals and Enviornment holds public comment meetings Wednesday and Thursday in Elk Point, S.D.

The DVBC took that stand about a year ago and spoke in support of the project before the public hearings on rezoning the 3,292 acres for the project held by the county zoning board and board of county commissioners.

DVBC President Greg Miner said in a statement that the business council wants its members to voice support for the project and to ask the DENR “to objectively evalutate the Hyperion Air Quality Permit and act on it without delay.”

Following the two days of public comment in Elk Point and a tour of the proposed site about seven miles north of there, the BME will hold a trial-like contested case hearing on the air quality permit over two weeks, one each in May and June, in Pierre. There’s no telling how long the board will review the evidence and application before ruling on it.

Hyperion needs the permit before the project can proceed.

Unless the Canadian government steps forward to provide more infrastructure assistance, an opportunity to expand Alberta’s oil sands industry and create hundreds of high-paying jobs will most certainly be lost foreover, a report released this week said, “Future of oil sands depends on government intervention”

The Alberta Federation of Labour commissioned the report, dubbed “Lost Down the Pipeline,”  which found that despite the global recession, energy companies are proceeding with aggressive plans to dramatically expand U.S.-based refining capacity, and American-bound pipeline capacity. 

In its report, the AFL listed U.S. refiners planning to tap into Alberta’s vast oil sands reserves, including Hyperion Refining, which hopes to build a 400,000-barrel-per-day refinery in Union County, S.D. 

“What our research shows is that American refineries will have the capacity to process all of the expected increase in oil sands output from Alberta,”  AFL president Gil McGowan said. “As a result, unless the Stelmach government steps in much more aggressively than it has, the raft of upgrader postponements we’ve seen here in Alberta will almost certainly turn into permanent cancellations. We’ll be losing literally thousands of jobs down the pipeline.”

James Heisinger, chairman of both the Living River Group and South Dakota chapters of the Sierra Club, sent out a press release this morning commenting on a couple letters from federal agencies that found a number of shortcomings in Hyperion Refining’s draft air quality permit and the South Dakota Department of Environment and Natural Resources’ handling of it. Its content is no surprise. A story detailing the lengthy (more…)

Not that anyone doubts it, but one Hyperion opponent has found evidence that history does repeat itself, even if only in variations on certain themes.

Check out timemagazine.com. Enter “Alberta tar sands” in the search bar and look for the article titled “Gushing Profits.”

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If you’re interested in reading more about the Alberta oil sands and what it means for Montana’s economy you might enjoy our sister paper’s coverage.

Check out the Billings Gazette articles here:
Montana businesses will feel economic impact from Alberta oil-sands industry

More Hyperion coverage from the Sioux City Journal is coming soon.

Today’s story about Hyperion Refining’s over estimating the emissions from its proposed IGCC – a gasification plant that would burn petroleum coke, a byproduct of oil refining, to produce electricity to power the refinery –  points to one reason the permitting process takes so long.  It’s complicated.

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Hyperion Resources CEO Albert Huddleston and his proposed refinery in Union County were lumped last week in an article on New York-based Web site Muckety.com along with four other contributors to the 2004 Swift Boat campaign that helped derail the presidential bid of John Kerry. The story appeared under the headline “Swift Board moneymen still trying to shape public policy.” Huddleston gave $100,000 to the campaign.

The story describes Hyperion’s effort to built the $10 billion refinery project in Union County, says it is ”a long way from reality” but notes its success last month in getting the zoning it needs for the project. It links to a Sioux City Journal article for more information on the refinery plans.

Along with Huddleston, the piece mentions Swift Boat contributors Aubrey McLendon, T. Boone Pickens, Bob Perry, Carl Lindner and Harold Simmons and their sizable respective donations to: the production of video “news” about the oil shale industry;a public policy campaign to wean the U.S. off foreign oil; a donation to the New Mexico Republican Party and the Republican Governors’ Association; and to the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. 

A Canadian opposition party leader has called for a ban of new oil-sands projects in Alberta to ease the industry’s impact on the environment.

Bloomberg reports that Jack Layton, leader of the Canadian New Democratic Party Leader, one of one of three opposition blocs in Parliament, also wants to end preferential U.S. access to the country’s energy supplies.

The proposed Hyperion Energy Center in Union County would process 400,000 barrels per day of the heavy crude from Alberta’s tar sands fields, bringing it to the southeast South Dakota site via pipeline.

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Gov. Mike Rounds, speaking to reporters this morning at Dakota Dunes Country Club, reiterated his pledge that South Dakota’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources would not take any shortcuts in reviewing the air quality and other permits Hyperion will need to build its proposed refinery.

 But, he warned, opponents who have vowed to disrupt and delay the permitting process through lawsuits and other tactics will be disappointed, at least in court. (more…)

About two thirds of the more than 1.6 billion barrels per day of new refining capacity planned in the United States is designed to handle tar crude oil from Alberta, Canada, two environmental groups reported this week.

In addition, U.S. refiners are planning to convert 800,000 barrels a day of current capacity from conventional crude to handle the Alberta imports, acccording to the U.S.-based Environmental Integrity Project and Canada’s Environmental Defence.

The groups argued the growing reliance on the heavier, ”dirtier” oil sands would have “catastrophic” environmental impacts, the Globe and Mail reported. 

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