An area north of Elk Point is poised to be the home of a future oil refinery and energy complex that would create up to 1,800 permanent jobs and thousands more to build it, Gov. Mike Rounds said Thursday. “It appears we are the leading site,” Rounds said at a news briefing at the Dakota Dunes Country Club. Rounds said he hopes South Dakota lands the refinery, planned by Dallas-based Hyperion Resources, adding that “they have my support for this project.”
If it is built, the $8 billion project would be the first oil refinery built in the United States since 1976. It would refine 400,000 barrels of oil into low-sulfur gasoline and diesel fuel each day. Workers would earn $20 to $30 per hour, officials have said.
While there would be multiple benefits of this project coming in (which IMHO far outweigh the negatives), predictably enough the NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) partisans are already sniping – you just know that would happen.
The Chief thinks that the positives of this project FAR outweigh the negatives, for the state, and for the nation as a whole, hopefully to break the logjam in the construction of needed refining capacity.
New refineries WILL be built, basically as soon as regulatory hurdles can be cleared (hopefully in MY lifetime). If SD can pull off landing this project, the lab at Homestake and Sanford becomes a world class childrens hospital it’s difficult to see a downside and the economic growth would be great for SD.