Mr. Bates’ linkblog is always a wealth of informative links. One of his recent entries was to an American Spectator article about the U.S. oil refinery shortage. Overall, American refineries cannot keep pace with the demand for petroleum products. The article also pointed out the fact that there have been no oil refineries built in the U.S. since 1976. That reminded me that I had recently heard something on the radio about a new Midwestern U.S. oil refinery. I did a little Googling and finally found the story I remembered hearing.

In a nutshell, Dallas-based Hyperion Resources is proposing building a huge, new, green refinery that will refine 400,000 barrels of crude a day into various petroleum products. They have not answered all the questions yet, or even committed to a location, though they have been optioning land just north of Elk Point, SD.

For more information on what has been code-named “The Gorilla Project,” these links might be useful.

Hyperion’s Initial Press Release, which states:

The refinery will process heavy crude oil from Canada and ship it to markets in the U.S. Additionally, the integrated refinery will incorporate a power plant with the latest technology, consuming petroleum coke byproduct from the refinery to supply hydrogen, steam and electricity to the refinery itself. Leveraging integrated gasification combined cycle technology (IGCC), the state-of-the art in power production, emissions will be substantially lower than conventional power generation plants…

An article in the Petroleum News from when the Gorilla Project plans first became public, observing:

The Gorilla project, near the Missouri and Big Sioux rivers, would also use 12 million gallons of river water per day for cooling purposes, Union County commissioners have been told.
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Though Hyperion says the company plans to use Canadian oil for feedstock, it’s unclear just how Hyperion would actually tap into the resource, with no third-party pipeline system in the immediate area of Elk Point to transport the product to market. Reportedly, a Hyperion representative said the project is of sufficient size to build and operate its own pipeline.

and, a website by Jason Quam, an Elk Point resident critical of the plans. The site includes lots of resources, video, print, and online. There’s also a discussion forum.