new refinery pork barrel in ND

[sammyg2]

AP
US Senate bill has money for N.D. refinery study
Tuesday July 8, 1:51 pm ET
North Dakota senator says legislation includes $500,000 for study of state's refining capacity


BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) -- Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., said a new appropriations bill will include $500,000 to study the costs of increasing petroleum refining capacity in North Dakota.
Dorgan, who chairs the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, said he is responsible for writing the appropriations bill for energy- and water-related federal projects.

He said in a statement that the new bill will include money for the North Dakota Association of Rural Electric Cooperatives to coordinate a study of incentives to increase North Dakota's refining capacity.

Dorgan said the continuing investment by Tesoro Corp. in its Mandan refinery is good news, but he said more is needed to ensure that North Dakota is not at risk of a fuel supply shortage.

BTW this is the same guy who called for a senate investigation of the refineries last year claiming they were price gouging when they were averaging a 5% profit margin, introduced a bill to increase taxes on oil to drive the price up even higher and voted against drilling for oil in the ANWR.
He needs to make up his freaking mind or at least read up a little on the subjects.

Spending federal taxes to investigate the cost of building a new refinery at a time when the US has excess refining capacity due to reduced demand and profits are almost non-existant seems a bit foolish, voting against increased oil production and voting to increase taxes on oil at a time when it is near record prices is also puzzling.
Either this guy it a real tard or he's being bought and sold on a weekly basis.

BTW he could save the taxpayers a cool $half a mil by just asking me what it would cost. I could ballpark a number off the top of my head and get within 10% and it wouldn't cost us a penny.

2nd BTW this genious and I went around and around last year over his positions on several things. In the end he said he wouldn't discuss anything further with me unless I provided my full address. Evidentlly he doesn't care what I think unless I live where I could vote against him.
I'm almost tempted to move to ND just so I could.

[Rick Lee]

$500k is pretty tame for one of these feasability studies. I always wondered why such studies cost such ridiculous money. It's not this is the Lewis & Clark expedition. Our land is well charted and plenty of gov't. agencies have very detailed records of where everything is. Furthermore, if the folks who do this study are salaried employees, why does it cost more to send them out on another job?

[Jim Richards]

Spending federal taxes to investigate the cost of building a new refinery at a time when the US has excess refining capacity due to reduced demand and profits are almost non-existant seems a bit foolish, voting against increased oil production and voting to increase taxes on oil at a time when it is near record prices is also puzzling.

I thought we were recently being told that refinery capacity was insufficient and that was a significant factor helping to prop up oil prices.

[Rikao4]

500K here & there, and before long you have a bridge to 'we are BROKE'.
Jim, can't let fact's get in the way of pork..can we.

Rika

[MRM]

Don't knock it, guys. The intern who was responsible for this earmark was hot. Well worth the half mil in the governmental scheme of things.

[sammyg2]

Originally Posted by Jim Richards

I thought we were recently being told that refinery capacity was insufficient and that was a significant factor helping to prop up oil prices.

There were some significant gasoline supply issues a couple years ago that caused an impact on price but since the price of gas went so high the demand has fallen off quite a bit. We don't need as much as we used to and refining companies have spent $ billions over the past two years streamlining and de-bottlenecking process units to increase capacity. There have been hundreds of expansion projects complweted to existing refineries in the US. We're using less but have the capability to make more.

Refinery capacity utilization is sitting at around 85% right now and will drop further by September. that's down from around 89 to 90% a year ago (which is full throttle, run it as hard as you can).

Our excess refining capacity is higher right now than it'd been in a decade.
Unless demand goes up quite a bit, refining capacity won't be an issue again for quite a while unless we get hit with big hurricanes or whatever.

Right now, today, the price of crude oil is the big problem. Crude price is what needs to be addressed. It's what's killing our economy.

BTW what it will cost to increase refining capacity in North Dakota is just over $1800 per barrel if they add onto an existing refinery. There will be an additional $300 per bbl if they have to upgrade existing pipeline capacity but that depends on how much more capacity increase they are after.
Your welcome, please Have them e-mail me for my paypal account so they can send me my $500,000.

[MRM]

Sammy, serious question. Does the decrease in demand for gas and excess refining capacity suggest the price of diesel will be going down soon? My understanding is that refining capacity and demand are what is driving diesel costs now.

[Rick Lee]

Originally Posted by Wayne at Pelican Parts

Isn't there only like 300,000 people in all of South Dakota? There's probably that many people here in the surrounding 20 sq miles...

-Wayne

There are far, far fewer people in ANWR. I would think S. Dakotans would be very offended that folks consider S. Dakota to be something less than pristine wilderness and worthy of drilling for oil. The antis care about the caribou in ANWR more than the good people of S. Dakota. Go figure.

[sammyg2]

Originally Posted by MRM

Sammy, serious question. Does the decrease in demand for gas and excess refining capacity suggest the price of diesel will be going down soon? My understanding is that refining capacity and demand are what is driving diesel costs now.

Hmmm. Most refineries are designed to produce significantly more gasoline than diesel.
As demand for diesel increased of the past several years, we just imported more from overseas. unfortunately the demand for diesel has increased there too so that has driven the price up. We are definately limited on diesel production capacity right now.

Refineries are scrambling to modify and expand their operating units to maximize diesel production. It takes time but over the next six months there should be more than enough diesel to go around and the price should fall to be even or maybe slightly less than regular unleaded.
I was involved in a project that went online last month that increased diesel production from our hydrocracker by about 6000 barrels a day, at the cost of 8000 barrels per day of gasoline. that was a trade we were more than willing to make as gasoline is selling for less that it costs to make right now. We're losing money on every gallon of gas we make but diesel is still profitable. Barely.

[Jim Richards]

Originally Posted by Wayne at Pelican Parts

Isn't there only like 300,000 people in all of South Dakota? There's probably that many people here in the surrounding 20 sq miles...

-Wayne

We're talking about North Dakota, Wayne. It's the state just to the north of South Dakota.

[Jim Richards]

Originally Posted by sammyg2

I was involved in a project that went online last month that increased diesel production from our hydrocracker by about 6000 barrels a day, at the cost of 8000 barrels per day of gasoline. that was a trade we were more than willing to make as gasoline is selling for less that it costs to make right now.

Hydrocracker? Are you guys water boarding Mule? How does that create fuel?

[MRM]

Methane from the excretions he produces under torture.

[sammyg2]

A hydrocracker is a process unit where extremely high pressure hydrogen (2100 psi) is introduced into a stream of hot gas oil and it goes through a series of reactors (usually three).
The reactors contain a very expensive catalyst that promotes a chemical reaction. The molecules are "cracked" and re-combined with the hydrogen to form a different type of molecule, usually gasoline and a smaller percentage of diesel.
That can be tweeked by changing the temperatures and pressures but there are still limits. We figured out a way to change the process to make a whole lot more diesel but we had no way to cool it down before sending it to the storage tanks.
The guys who run the tank farm tend to get pissy when you send them 700 degree diesel and their tanks expolode.

We designed and installed a series of coolers and pumps that could cool the higher volume of hot diesel before it is shipped to the tanks. Sounds simple but it was actually quite a bit on engineering. It has to handle over a quarter million gallons a day and we designed, built, installed and commissioned this system in 40 days. Usually it takes longer than that to decide which caterer is going to provide the food for a meeting.

We coudn't just use water as a cooling medium because of the high product temperatures so we have a three stage cooling system. The first uses low pressure, low energy steam to remove some heat. The second is a pure glycol closed loop system with water being used as the secondary meduim. The third system uss regular old cooling water from a cooling tower.

That little project (a couple of $mil) paid for itself in less than two weeks.

[Jim Richards]

Sammy, I think the explanation of hydrocracker that MRM and I offered up is more interesting.