Big Oil's Raid on the Great Plains

[DogPoundPup]

One must ask why is a Texas corporation moving as rapidly as it has to obtain approvals for a 400,000 barrel-a-day oil refinery to be located where there is no oil?

There is in fact a thimbleful of oil in extreme northwestern South Dakota, but not enough to keep a refinery busy. There is no oil whatever in Union County, South Dakota, which is where Hyperion is attempting to move in to establish what it calls, “a green refinery.” Putting aside for the moment the fact that there is no such thing as a “green refinery,” why Hyperion wants to establish any kind of refinery in the lush farmlands of Southeastern South Dakota is a mystery. A mystery, that is, until one looks a little closer at the Texas corporation.

Hyperion is controlled by Texan Albert Huddleston, who, in 2004, contributed $100,000 to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a Committee set up to smear Democratic Presidential Candidate John Kerry. He is also reported to be a close friend of George W. Bush. The Corporation is planning to construct a $10 billion refinery on land where heretofore corn has been the principal commodity.

Huddleston is married to Mary Hunt, the granddaughter of fabled Texas oilman, H.L. Hunt. He is also the Defendant in a lawsuit brought against him by a Miro Vranac, who is one of the Trustees of the “Lyda Hunt Bunker-Mary Moreland Hunt Trust.” Vranac claims he was unjustly fired by Albert and Mary Huddleston after, so he alleges, he tried to block Huddleston’s attempt to use trust proceeds to pay off mortgages on real estate Mary Huddleston owned. The lawsuit also alleges that Huddleston had requested a distribution of an additional $20 million from the Trust for what the lawsuit describes as “other misguided projects in Iraq and South Dakota.”

Beyond Huddleston, Hyperion’s background adds to the mystery of why anyone would plant an oil refinery where there is no oil.

One of the opponents of the refinery, Jason Quam, did some research on Hyperion as a company. He found that the only real business Hyperion has been engaged in is building, buying and selling “sanitary landfills”—or in common parlance, garbage dumps.

<snip>
Hyperion says it will tap Canadian tar sands from which crude oil will be extracted, then send it in a pipeline down to South Dakota. Based on the cost of a pipeline now being planned by another oil company wanting to ship oil through South Dakota, such a pipeline from Canada to Union County will cost anywhere from $6 to $7 billion dollars. Added to the cost of building the refinery, we’re talking real money here.

What South Dakotans are facing is the fact that there is no oil dirtier than that which comes from tar sands. It is of such a low grade of crude that it has to be heavily refined. And how long the nation of Canada will stand for the pollution and energy wastage resulting from producing oil from tar sands is a serious question. This kind of extraction process produces three times more greenhouse gas emissions than does a barrel of conventional oil. The only “green” thing remaining is that which will float southward to Texas into Albert Huddleston’s bank account, leaving South Dakota, a state which now has very clean air, to live with the pollution from his refinery.
http://www.counterpunch.org/abourezk07172008.html

[Longtooth]

1. We do need more oil refineries though. Have to put them somewhere.

[DogPoundPup]

2. LOL Sarcasm....right? RIGHT?

[malakai2]

4. It's easy to sell in SD

There is no mass transit, so getting here or there requires driving, often long distances at that. Gasoline goes from $1 to $2 to $4 and pretty soon that 60 mile drive to the grocery store or the auction barn or wherever becomes too expensive. Faced with a choice between giving up a lifestyle to move into a city where there are no job prospects, or granting oil companies what they want in the hope that no sacrifice will be required, most people are going to sit tight and hope for the best.

[Dogmudgeon]

3. Biggest pollution disaster in history, ready to go

The water demands from a full-bore Athabascan oil operation would rival the Great Lakes.

The technology is expensive. The EROEI is low, though it is positive. It would draw an incredible amount of energy and generate a huge volume of carbon dioxide in return -- unless they use wind, solar, and/or nuclear energy to do the job, which seems like a waste of effort.

Alberta would be turned into one big company town. I guess that Al Huddleston wants to own at least a part of that company.

The Orinoco basin in Venezuela is posing enough technical difficulties, and it's a much easier product to "crack" and refine. Canada is in for a nightmare if they want to develop the Athabasca for anything beyond specialized "boutique" fuel.

--p!