MAKOTI The Three Affiliated Tribes hope to start construction this spring on its refinery west of Makoti on the Fort Berthold Reservation, tribal officials said.
The refinery now is called Thunder Butte Petroleum Services Inc. The name is from an early day story of one of the tribes' clans, said Glenda Baker Embry, public relations officer for the tribes.
Currently, the Thunder Butte refinery staff is going over 17 finance and development proposals, Embry said. She said a rating team will choose the final proposal.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued the final permit for the refinery, the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit, to the tribe in August 2011.
However, late last year the EPA reissued portions of the permit but it was not expected to slow down the process of constructing the clean fuels refinery on the Fort Berthold Reservation.
"The NPDES operating permit does not affect and is not required for construction activities; it applies to discharges from the facility once it is operating," said Richard Mylott, a spokesman for EPA's Region 8, in Denver told The Minot Daily News.
"Last November, EPA withdrew specific technology-based effluent limits in the operating permit after determing they were calculated in error. EPA revised these effluent limits in December and is providing an opportunity for public review and comment until January 26," Mylott said. Originally, the deadline for comments was Jan. 13.
EPA Region 8 officials in Denver, in a prepared statement late last year, said the Environmental Appeals Board received a petition from the Environmental Awareness Committee who said the feedstock switch warranted a new EPA review process. The committee is a Fort Berthold Reservation group comprised of tribal members..
Tex Hall, tribal chairman, told The Minot Daily News in August 2011, when the permit was approved, that when the tribe switched its plan from processing Canadian tar sands to the Bakken crude, it threw in more consultation.
However, some initial construction for the refinery was done last fall to fulfill EPA requirements. Hall said they poured the foundation and footings, as well as did the flare stack foundation.
The Thunder Butte refinery, a project the tribes have worked on since 2003, will be built west of Makoti in southwest Ward County. The site is by N.D. Highway 23, Canadian Pacific Railway tracks and a pipeline owned by Enbridge Pipelines ND.
Katie Haarsager, North Dakota Community Relations adviser at Enbridge Pipelines ND in Minot, said Enbridge maintains an idle 6-inch pipeline from Stanley to Wabek. Wabek is a few miles west of the refinery site.
Rich Mayer, former chief executive officer of the Three Affiliated Tribes, was named last fall to lead the refinery project.
The Three Affiliated Tribes began planning for a refinery in early 2000, purchasing more than 460 acres of land in the northeast corner of the Fort Berthold Reservation.
The clean fuels refinery would be capable of refining 15,000 barrels per day of Bakken Formation crude oil into diesel fuel, gasoline and propane. It would be the first refinery to be built in the United States in many years. The last one was built in Garyville, La., and began operating in 1976.
Cindy Schild, Washington, D.C., refining issues manager with the American Petroleum Institute, said the refinery at Garyville and others have expanded even doubled in size.
Besides the Three Affiliated Tribes' refinery, there are proposals for two other new refineries in the U.S. one in Yuma, Ariz., and the other in Hyperion, S.D., Schild said.
The Hyperion Energy Center includes a 400,000 barrels per day refinery that will produce green transportation fuel (ultra-low sulfur gasoline, ultra-low sulfur diesel and ultra-low sulfur aviation fuel), according to its website. It would be built north of Elk Point in extreme southeastern South Dakota.
Arizona Clean Fuels Yuma is a Phoenix-based company planning to build a refinery near Tacna, a community east of Yuma in the southwest corner of Arizona. The plant is being planned to refine 150,000 barrels per day of crude oil and about 1.8 million gallons per day of other petroleum-based materials. Primary products of the refinery will be gasoline, jet fuel, propane and diesel fuel, according to its website.
