Cool, Cool Story; Minnesota Refinery Finds New Life With Bakken -- June 22, 2015

Minnesota's oldest refinery is seeing new life with Bakken oil:

Minnesota’s oldest oil refinery sees a bigger future with Bakken crude.

The refinery on the banks of the Mississippi River in St. Paul Park plans $100 million in upgrades that by next year will boost its refining capability to more than 100,000 barrels of crude oil per day.

With that upgrade, on top of significant investment since 2011, the refinery will be able to refine 29 percent more crude than it did when Marathon Oil Corp. sold it in 2010 to new owners.

Today, 58 percent of the refinery’s crude oil comes from North Dakota — a level that’s expected to grow. Five years ago, 51 percent of its crude arrived from Canada.

“It was effectively a Canadian crude refinery,” said Paul Anderson, vice president of investor relations and business development for current owner Northern Tier Energy.

“Five years ago, Bakken was barely known — it was a very small stream, a very small part of our business strategy when we bought the refinery from Marathon.”

The tilt toward North Dakota crude seems like a logical step for refineries in the U.S. midcontinent, especially as direct-to-refinery pipelines become available.

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US home sales jump in May, average prices close to 2006 peak. Short supply.

I was just called by our oldest granddaughter to join them in an outing this morning, so I will be off-the-net in a few minutes.

I will be back later today or later this evening.

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In My Aristotle Book-Reading Phase

Mount Olymbus, Lesvos And yes, that's the "correct" spelling. For both. I Want Tomorrow, Enya.