Legalectric

An early fall… I remember last year we were out on the river on a 70 degree day in November, but that’s bizarre too.   Need to persuade the Save the Bluffs folks to choose different colors for their “NO Frac Sand Mining” signs… and we’ll be adding a “VOTE NO-NO” and a “FREE” sign, plus there are plans for a Little Free Library on the corner.

The  Hyperion project, an 800 pound gorilla, an oil refinery PLUS a coal gasification (IGCC) plant (it morphed quite a bit over the years), proposed for agricultural land west of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, has been looming for a long time, but there’s evidence that the stakes through it’s slimy heart are having an impact.

In the Argus Leader:

Hyperion declines to renew options with Union County landowners

The stake in Hyperion’s slimy heart is that there’s no money:

“I don’t know why people are opposing Hyperion, but it’s not going to be built because they’ll never get financing,” he said. “Nobody’s going to put up that money. … Just because you have the piece of land and a state that will let you put it there doesn’t mean it makes sense.”

There’s no money to build Hyperion, no investors, another vaperware project sounding a lot like the AWA Goodhue wind project here in Goodhue Count, or Excelsior Energy’s Mesaba Project, coal gasification on the Iron Range.  It’s the lack of money that’s the real news:

Industry analysts question Hyperion

Two industry analysts are casting doubt on the viability of the proposed Hyperion oil refinery in Union County, though a company spokesman questioned the impartiality of their criticisms.

In an Aug. 20 article in the trade paper Platts Oilgram News, Malcom Turner, chairman of the firm Turner, Mason and Co. of Dallas, said financing will continue to be a problem for large projects such as Hyperion.

“Nobody would finance it,” he told Platts. “It would take forever to build.”

Dallas-based Hyperion Refining has proposed to build a $10 billion refinery in Union County to process 400,000 barrels of heavy Canadian crude daily into various refined products. The company first applied for a Prevention of Significant Deterioration air quality permit from the state — the first of about a dozen permits it needs to collect before it can start up — in 2007.

In an interview with the Argus Leader, Turner said South Dakota is not a good fit for a large refinery because the Midwestern market won’t support any additional refined product.

“I don’t know why people are opposing Hyperion, but it’s not going to be built because they’ll never get financing,” he said. “Nobody’s going to put up that money. … Just because you have the piece of land and a state that will let you put it there doesn’t mean it makes sense.”

Via email, Hyperion spokesman Eric Williams disputed Turner’s assessment, saying that there is plenty of demand for refined product in the Midwest and that existing refining capacity is “old, outdated and inefficient.”

“There are many people in the investment community who recognize that fact and see the opportunity for building a new refinery that’s state-of-the-art both in terms of the environment and operating efficiency,” he wrote.

He also said siting the refinery in Union County would reduce pipeline tariffs as compared with those paid by Gulf refineries to ship refined products to the Midwest.

“From the beginning we’ve had doubters, and there are certainly some in the industry who don’t want to see our project built,” he wrote. “But we’ve invested scores of millions of dollars and are in it for the long haul.”

Rough road

The Platts article also quoted a friend of Turner’s, Glenn McGinnis, an industry consultant and CEO of Arizona Clean Fuels Yuma, which has had a $4.5 billion refinery in the works since the late 1990s.

“It doesn’t make sense to build a monster refinery on the prairie” because the area lacks the infrastructure to connect refined products to end markets, McGinnis told Platts.

Speaking Monday to the Argus Leader, McGinnis said his own experience trying to get a refinery financed and permitted are an indication that Hyperion has a tough road ahead.

“The technology selection is good, the opportunity for providing jobs and financial benefits is good and likely supported by a lot of folks,” he said of Hyperion’s proposal. “But to me, the infrastructure issues, and the ability to finance the project, are really going to make it difficult.”

Plans for his own refinery are tentatively on hold, McGinnis said, though it has an active air quality permit from the state. That project would pipe its crude from Mexico.

Part of the problem is that Arizona Clean Fuels, like other downstream projects, has had trouble securing financing in a down economy, despite not having drawn legal challenges as Hyperion has, McGinnis said.

The Sierra Club, Save Union County and Citizens Opposed to Oil Pollution have challenged Hyperion’s PSD air quality permit, a case that will be heard by the South Dakota Supreme Court Oct. 3 in Sioux Falls.

Williams, for his part, said McGinnis and Turner lack credibility because they are Hyperion’s competitors: McGinnis as CEO of a company that’s also trying to build a refinery, and Turner as an analyst who represents competing refiners.

“We’re not terribly concerned about what analysts say about our financing,” Williams said. “As a private company we don’t discuss those details. It’s like me requesting that upper management at the Argus to release their paystubs.”

Building pipeline

Phillips also told Platts the company recently spoke with the Canadian pipeline companies TransCanada and Enbridge about building a pipeline to carry crude from Hardisty, Alberta, to the refinery. Or Hyperion might build the line itself.

Williams declined to discuss details of these discussions “given the proprietary nature of these talks.”

TransCanada spokesman Shawn Howard said via email that the company is “always looking for opportunities to connect supply to markets” but that he could not discuss specific proposals.

An Enbridge spokeswoman did not return messages.

Rebuttal comments were due on the Greenhouse Gas Rule.

Out of the entire state of Minnesota, the only rebuttal comments filed were filed by Alan Muller and moi.

Rebuttal Comments as of September 26, 2012

Pathetic – and proof that the MPCA’a notice was deficient, which the agency admits, and that the “usual suspects” in all things CO2 have abdicated and sat back, thumbs implanted, doing nothing.

From the OAH site:

Public Comments

Public exhibits that were received at the August 30, 2012, hearing, and comments that have been received by Judge Cervantes since August 30, 2012, will be posted below.

• Public Comments Received During the Public Comment Period July 9 – August 10, 2012
• Public Comments as of September 18, 2012
• Public Comments as of September 19, 2012 Batch 1
• Public Comments as of September 19, 2012 Batch 2
• Public Comments as of September 19, 2012 Batch 3
• Rebuttal Comments as of September 26, 2012

Agency Comments

• Transcript of Hearing – via Wayback Machine
• PCA Response to and Rebuttal of Comments
• Letter from Revisor of Statutes
• 7007.1450 Revision Line 61.9
• Adopted Permanent Rules Relating to Greenhouse Gas Permit Requirements
• Responses to Comments Received During Public Comment Period July 9 – August 10, 2012
• Rebuttal Comments as of September 26, 2012

Agency Exhibits

• Table of Jurisdictional Document Exhibits and Exhibit 1
• Exhibit 2
• Exhibit 3
• Exhibit 3.1
• Exhibit 3.2
• Exhibit 3.3
• Exhibit 3.4
• Exhibits 3.5-5
• Exhibit 6
• Exhibit 7
• Exhibit 8
• Exhibits 9-11

Well, technically, progress on the home back!

BEWARE, YOU ARE ENTERING A CONSTRUCTION ZONE!

I finally built the railing and posts for the frame for the awning I made, a little 9 x 18 number from a gazebo cover,and it’ll have a conduit frame.  FINALLY, it’s been waiting for months, and now that it’s 30 degrees out, time to get it done!

The awning frame will sit on top of the rail that will soon be connecting the posts, well anchored in, and connected to the house, and the area off to the right, with a rail already there will be the summer kitchen, covered with that corrugated plastic stuff, covering my “Direct Action” stove.  And of course that’s our dear Summer dog, she had a good day today, strolled around the house, spent hours outside, she is one happy pup.  This is what 13.5 looks like in a German Shepherd!

Summer grrrrrrrrrl approves!  From this, when we first looked at the house (Honey Bear’s mom, hang in there, you WILL get your “new” house habitable!):

To this, soon to be the mudroom laundry and bathroom:

And the cute little sink we found will go in the corner under that bag of bags on the right, and maybe another window on that far wall window to open it up, provide a view!  There’s a decent sized window opposite the washer/dryer.  What thrills me most is that the awful laminate crap is GONE, and the vinyl underneath is OK and growing on me.  I’d prefer to get down to the wood, odds are it’s good because the wood has been good throughout this house so far, even if it’s only pine flooring in this part, but it looks from the hole cut for the toilet that it’s a good solid floor.  Anyway, we’ll keep this vinyl.  It’s a cute pattern, seafoam green, light and a medium shade, on off-white, very 60s, not quite as good as the 50-60s nuclear wall paper in my office at the other house, but I can live with this when it’s scrubbed up.  Walls need to be painted, antique white again, or a very light seafoam green and GET RID of the depressing blue, and that will open it up some too.

The worst of this, well, it’s good in that the bad news of this was that we figured the mudroom was essentially an old porch so the plumbing would have to go straight back, through the wall into the cabinets in the kitchen and then down, BUT the good news is that noooooooo, it’s not, there’s a coal bin under there, so it’s INSIDE!  But that meant the bad news of digging all the coal out of the bin, lots of it, bags and bags, and we’re still waiting to hear from the guy who has a steam engine who wanted it, now that it’s all upstairs and outside, he’s disappeared.  Alan’s been spending his days in the coal bin, crawling in the teeny hole, hauling out coal, hauling in equipment and parts and plumbing all of this.  It’s almost good to go, LITERALLY!

Fixing up a house takes a while, but it’s happening, this is a big step.  And then, dormer and bath up in the attic!  Yeah, that’s it.  And sometime, get that awful laminate crap out of the kitchen.  It’s so slippery ol’ Summer can’t stand up on it, it’s like the poor dear is on a skating rink, all 4 feet going in separate directions.

And this wall in the kitchen????  The island is jettisoned (pinkISH cabinets, what WERE they thinking), as is the blue.  YUCK, how depressing can it get, they must have had prozac dispensers at the doors (how bad can it get?  Yes, it does get worse, the dining room, living room, and pantry just through door are DARK DARK green.  The pantry now matches the kitchen, see below, but living room and dining room still need brightening):

That ugly room is now this happy and light room.  I’m trying to put the cabinets back that must have filled that ugly blue wall when the house was built, found two units one free and one for $35 and a butcher block counter and a wall unit from a cabinet surplus place.  Since this photo below, the wall outlet is fixed, there’s a heavy duty Hunter ceiling fan now in the middle, and another pool table light fixture over the sink off to the left, pegboard soon on the wall over the “new” counter, slowly it’s happening, and as you can see, Summer is so happy (as Kate quietly practices her 2nd position ballet steps in the background):