Link to Bismarck Tribune here.
The Three Affiliated Tribes announced Wednesday that it has been given permit approval to take control of a piece of reservation land to build an oil refinery.
U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar joined with tribal leaders at tribal headquarters to announce the permit approval, which brings a refinery one step closer to reality.
Nine years ago the tribe had requested that the Bureau of Indian Affairs, a part of the Department of the Interior, accept the acreage into a trust. The trust will allow the Interior department to own the land while allowing the tribe to control and manage it.
The tribe has wanted to use a 469-acre piece of land near Makoti to build the refinery and produce feed for the tribe’s buffalo herd. Plans call for the refinery to be built on a 190-acre portion of the land. The other land will be used for the buffalo.
The permitting process, which was nearly a decade in the making, opens the door for the construction of a new refinery in more than 30 years.SecInterior Ken Salazar sounded jubilant in the news story; he should have been dismayed that it took nine years to get a permit.
Data points:
- MHA Nation Clean Fuels Refinery
- $400 million refinery
- capacity of 13,000 bbls/day
- Bakken oil --> diesel, gasoline, propane (I still don't see the "clean fuels" aspect of this, yet)
- refinery site: along US Highway 23, on the edge of the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation
- 800 to 1,000 jobs during construction phase
- about 140 permanent jobs
- nine years to get the permit
