Texas-based Hyperion Refining LLC has changed plans yet again for its proposed 400,000 barrel-a-day tar sands oil plant near the Iowa-South Dakota border. This time, the change may reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Hyperion Refining said Monday that it will be able to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 57,000 tons per year over its previous estimates by incorporating four additional heat recovery devices into the design of the 400,000-barrel-per-day oil refinery it is planning to build near Elk Point and Vermillion, S.D. Continue reading →
Methane emissions estimates increased twofold for the proposed tar sands oil refinery in Elk Point, S.D., which is near the South Dakota-Iowa border. (Photo: The City of Elk Point, SD.)
If it is ever built, it will be dirtier.
Texas-based Hyperion Refining LLC has altered its methane emission estimates on its proposed 400,000 barrel-a-day tar sands oil plant near the Iowa-South Dakota border.
The company now expects the refinery to produce alsost twice as much methane – 980 tons per year instead of 498. That is significant, because as the Sioux City Journal reports:
Methane, an odorless gas, is considered a more potent greenhouse gas, trapping heat in the atmosphere at a rate 20 times greater than carbon dioxide over a 100-year period, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Hyperion said it had inadvertently left coke drum steam vents out of its original estimates to the South Dakota Department of Environment and Natural Resources. Continue reading →
Pristine Elk Point, SD is the site of a cross-state dispute over an oil refinery that may not be built for years, if at all. (Photo: The City of Elk Point, SD.)
By Jim Malewitz
Elk Point was never in the spotlight before. But for three years, this quiet South Dakota town of just 750 families and a handful of restaurants has become the focal point in a dispute over a proposed 400,000 barrel-a-day tar sands oil refinery.
It would be the first tar sands plant built the United States since 1976.
Proposed by Dallas-based Hyperion LLC, the refinery has spurred an ideological clash between those hoping to add jobs to a still stagnant economy and those concerned about the health of the near pristine environment of this town, just 15 miles Southwest of Sioux City, and its nearby national parks and recreation areas.
Tar sands is an extra dark, heavy oil that researchers like Scott Spak, at the University of Iowa Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research, call “absolutely filthy.” Hyperion has said the refinery will use new technology that will limit emissions.
Disagreements over the proposal haven’t been confined to Elk Point or surrounding Union County, where 58 percent of voters approved a zoning ordinance that set aside 3,292 acres of land for the Hyperion refinery. Bickering over the refinery has crept across the border into Iowa and into the rhetoric of lawmakers, and was heightened by the recent midterm elections.
But a review of documents on Hyperion’s permitting process show that the refinery likely won’t be built for years, if at all. Since announcing Elk Point as a finalist for the refinery in June 2007, Hyperion has received just one of seven major permits required for its operation, and even that permit is tenuous. Continue reading →
An oil refinery, Shell at Martinez, California. (photo: Wikipedia commons)
A proposed $10 billion tar sands oil refinery near the South Dakota-Iowa border is causing a stir among political and environmental groups in both states. If all goes as Hyperion plans, it will be the first tar sands refinery built in the U.S. since the 1970s.
Environmental groups argue that the crude tar sands oil is the dirtiest around, and the refinery would pose a huge threat to the land, air, and water supply in both states. Hyperion says it will use the greenest of technology – a notion loudly disputed by those who have critically examined the proposal
And politicians in both states in support of the plant argue that it will bring much-need jobs into the area.
The $10 billion refinery will be built in Elk Point, S.D., just 30 miles north of Sioux City. With the area’s wind patterns and flow of the nearby Missouri River, environmental activists are calling the proposed refinery potentially “devastating” to Iowans’ safety. Although the Texas-based Hyperion Refining LLC says the facility will create 10,000 jobs — many of which will go to Iowans, the company assures — the negative environmental impacts of the oil extraction from the tar sands is well-document, critics say.
Iowa Environmental Focus 