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Medical Forum / General / General / January 2008Univ. South Dakota, Morningside College, Briar Cliff, NorthWestern, WIT too close to a megaOilrefinery
You know if Hyperion of Texas tried to put up a megarefinery 30 miles from any Ivy league schools they would be tarred and feathered out of town. And if they tried to pull a stunt like this near any state University they would be tarred and feathered out of town. But I am amazed at the calm and lethargy of destroying the air near the above listed colleges and Universities at the proposed mega oil refinery. I was looking to see how close by an oil refinery of that scale is to a college or university and apparently if Hyperion gets its way, that the University of South Dakota, and Morningside College and Briar Cliff and NorthWestern and WIT will end up being the worlds most air polluted colleges in the USA. I have a simple solution to Hyperion, for I will move out. But what choice do these colleges and universities have. I cannot envision students in physical activity when a air polluter of cancer is nearby and what parents would send their kids to a school that has dirty air. So I am really surprized of the muted response by colleges and schools in the Elk Point surroundings. Perhaps few if any of the people in this area really understand what it means to have a mega refinery nearby. That it becomes the dominant feature for 100 miles radius and ruins the air. I am distraught that only the people in Union county South Dakota get a chance to vote on whether Hyperion can build an oil refinery there. I believe everyone in the 100 mile radius should be allowed to vote on such a thing, for they all will end up breathing the cancerous air. As for Hyperion, those fat cats should have enough commonsense to know that there are over 100 mothballed refinery sites in place in which they can build their dream-refinery. So build there and do not dit dot cross every nice section of the USA with your lousy air pollution. And also, in the voting of whether Hyperion is allowed Elk Point, it should be mandatory that the executives of Hyperion live 1 mile downwind of the new refinery if built. P.S. Now I wonder if the colleges and universities in the USA have some sort of public legal privilege that an air polluter such as Hyperion if built is simply too close to these public institutions and thus a breaking of some sort of legal issue. As I said earlier, if Hyperion tried to pull this trick off on a Ivy league school they would be tarred and feathered out of town. Archimedes Plutonium www.iw.net/~a_plutonium whole entire Universe is just one big atom where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies > You know if Hyperion of Texas tried to put up a megarefinery 30 miles > from any Ivy league schools [quoted text clipped - 61 lines] > would be tarred and feathered > out of town. Hyperion's mega Refinery would do about 500,000 barrels of oil per day and one of the largest oil refineries ever built. They claim they will spend 9 billion dollars on it. But all oil refineries dirty the air and leave the surrounding environment in a perpetual smog cloud. Now as the crow fly's from the campus of University of South Dakota in Vermillion to the proposed Refinery in Elk Point would be approximately 10 miles. In counties where oil refineries were built, that everyone would could afford moving out, moved out in a 50 mile radius. Well, the University of South Dakota cannot pack up and move out. So how long will it take before people realize the school is under a permanent smog cloud that is unsafe for physical exercise and sports and unsafe for health. How long will it take before newspapers and magazines tell students that the most unhealthy college and university in the USA is University of South Dakota, Briar Cliff in Iowa, Morningside in Iowa, NorthWestern in Iowa because of their proximity to a mega oil Refinery. The thing that astounds me, most of all, is that the USA has 100 to 150 mothballed refinery sites that require little to no permitting or approval to start them back up. So why destroy the air and farmland of South Dakota and Iowa, when you have over 100 other sites already in place. Archimedes Plutonium www.iw.net/~a_plutonium whole entire Universe is just one big atom where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies > > You know if Hyperion of Texas tried to put up a megarefinery 30 miles > > from any Ivy league schools [quoted text clipped - 97 lines] > other sites already in > place. Hyperion has never built a oil refinery before and never managed one. So who are they fronting for? Let the real players come out into the open. Archimedes Plutonium www.iw.net/~a_plutonium whole entire Universe is just one big atom where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies I doubt that anyone with the proposed oil refinery in Elk Point South Dakota computed the numbers. That if the numbers were computed that more energy is wasted by piping that oil sludge down through USA than if Canada were to refine it in situ and then truck the finished product into the States. Consider a refinery in Elk Point versus the same refinery in Canada. Compute the energy of pressurizing the pipeline to get it to flow to Elk Point. That is considerable energy spent for the pressure. Now consider the distribution of the refined product if trucked from Canada to the five states of Iowa, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Minnesota. There would be considerable trucking involved if the refinery were located in South Dakota. So I think the calculations would show that more energy is spent with a pipeline rather than refinery in situ. And the reason being is the energy to pressurize the pipeline because this form of oil is very heavy and has too much waste. So I doubt that either Hyperion or the governors who are pushing this oil refinery ever sat down and did the calculations. And if an expert were to hand them the calculations those governors would probably ignore the figures. The end result of a oil refinery built in Elk Point is a dirty community of dirty air and although it will bring in a thousand new workers, since these things are so dirty that it will drive out a large number of people who do not want to live in such an area. And drive out other businesses as well. So although Hyperion would bring in a thousand workers, Hyperion will probably drive out 20,000 families and businesses who want to live in a cleaner environment. So I think the Governor of South Dakota, Mr. Mike Rounds who is so much pushing this project owes it to the people of South Dakota and especially those in this south eastern corner and owes it to all those farmers not affected by the TransCanada pipeline going through Yankton to destinations further south, but to the added second pipeline that Hyperion will have to build for Elk Point and all those farmers in North and South Dakota that will be hit by this second pipeline where they are going to lose pieces of their farmland for easement. These farmers who are going to be "easement out" by a second pipeline should be informed before approval is given for an Elk Point refinery, not after the refinery is approved. Question for our governor Mr. Mike Rounds, are you more of a governor for outside Texans than concerned about the welfare of South Dakotans with all your secrecy and your siding with Texas oilmen? Our governor of South Dakota has been callous about the concerns of residents of South Dakota. He has acted in secrecy and in not properly informing people of what an oil refinery truly means. The bare minimum that the Governor of South Dakota should display to the citizens of South Dakota, not only to the people in the Elk Point region but to all the farmers who will be saddled with an easement of a second pipeline. The bare minimum that Mr. Rounds should give the citizens is the computation that oil refined in Elk Point saves energy rather than it refined up in Canada. I doubt our governor can give us that numbers data, because the energy lost in a pressurized pipeline that is predominantly thick sludge. So who truly wins from a Elk Point refinery? Those fat cat Texas oilmen win, and those one thousand refinery employees but everyone who breathes the dirty air and has their property values lowered since they have a oil refinery in the neighborhood. None of the five states are going to win because the oil could be trucked in from Canada just as easy as it is trucked in from Elk Point. I am sure our governor meant well and good, but he simply did not do the full homework. And it is not too late to simply say "no" to Hyperion or whoever they are fronting for. Archimedes Plutonium www.iw.net/~a_plutonium whole entire Universe is just one big atom where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies I am going to duplicate these posts to science newsgroups because it hints that when we have a pile of oil or pile of coal to make use of, that the best conversion is a "hydrogen fuel cell" Archimedes Plutonium wrote: > That if the numbers were computed that more energy is wasted by piping > that oil sludge down > through USA than if Canada were to refine it in situ and then truck > the finished product into the > States. Science can almost recreate the scene in which the South Dakota Governor Mr. Mike Rounds had a meeting with Hyperion officials over the proposed Elk Point oil refinery. The math numbers that are needed and which I alluded to above is to compute an oil refinery built in Alberta Canada where the tar sands lie and a oil refinery built in Elk Point South Dakota. The *energy cost* of truck hauling refined petrol from Alberta down to Elk Point, versus the *energy cost* of placing the tar sands into the pipeline and applying pressure to move that volume of tar sands down to Elk Point South Dakota. So that is the question I asked of our Governor Mr. Mike Rounds. Do we spend more in energy in a pressurized pipe of tar sands than if we simply refined the the tar sands up in Canada and then trucked the petrol to Elk Point. So what I believe is the answer is that it costs more in energy to pressurize pipe the tar sands. Now although it costs more in energy, if I am correct in the maths, it may still be economical for building a pipeline into the USA because the owners of the tar sands may not mind wasting alot of energy so long as they make profits. And we can see that with the EnBridge and TransCanada pipelines in that they are laid out to large metropolitan cities of Chicago, St. Louis, Twin Cities and Oklahoma City, Kansas City and Wichita. But does a mega refinery in sparsely populated South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, North Dakota, Montana make sense? No So according to the maths, if the maths are correct, what probably transpired in 2007 when the South Dakota Governor met with Hyperion officials was that Hyperion never had it in mind to build a mega refinery in Elk Point but rather to locate a pipeline to the Des Moines and Omaha corridor and a small refinery of perhaps 100,000 barrels a day. But instead, the South Dakota Governor probably arm twisted those Hyperion officials by saying that if you build a mega refinery in Elk Point with a 400,000 barrel per day capacity that he would bend over backwards to help them build in Elk Point. It is likely that the Hyperion officials explained to Mr. Rounds that a oil refinery in Elk Point was impractical since it took more energy in a pressurized pipeline than if it were simply trucked down petrol and that a 100,000 barrel refinery was practical only for the Des Moines region. So that Mr. Rounds likely then upped the stakes by saying, well do a 400,000 barrel refinery. This explains why the Sioux City newspapers have never printed any adverse talk about the proposed Hyperion oil refinery and why the Iowa people have all been for the project, because the Iowa politicians realize that the oil from Elk Point will mostly go to fueling the Des Moines corridor. What I propose is that we build oil refineries only where it makes sense to build them in that they are not a waster of energy. I believe we are at the dawn of a new way of extracting energy from tar sands and coal, in that we can convert them into a *solid hydrogen fuel cell* that can drive a car for a long period of time. So we convert a pile of coal into a hydrogen fuel cell or convert Alberta tar sands into a hydrogen fuel cell. This other route of tapping into tar sands and coal means pipelines cross crissing the entire country and ruining many agriculture farmlands and where all of the USA ends up in a "polluted smog cloud". Archimedes Plutonium www.iw.net/~a_plutonium whole entire Universe is just one big atom where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies > I am going to duplicate these posts to science newsgroups because it > hints that when we have [quoted text clipped - 23 lines] > applying pressure to move that > volume of tar sands down to Elk Point South Dakota. We live in newer times. Times in which we must factor in whether our energy policy increases Global Warming or decreases it. So the question of whether more energy is spent and wasted by a pressurized pipeline versus a trucking of the refined petrol from Canada has to be seriously debated. The old way of doing things where a Hyperion and Conoco Philips and BP and the Governors of South Dakota, Iowa and Nebraska only looked at profit margins. Where they did not care that they wasted 1/4 of the tar sands just to move them down to Elk Point to refine. Those were the old days when noone worried about the air pollution that would increase global warming. But this is a new day where we do care about polluters who increase Global Warming. So the question remains. How much energy is wasted of the tar sands by having a pressurized pipeline versus refining all those tar sands up in Canada and then trucking it down to Elk Point South Dakota. You see, in the old days noone cared that a pressurized pipeline would cause so much more Global Warming than simply trucking the refined fuel from Canada. But now we must consider the Global Warming factor. What would make the very best sense and use of those tar sands and coal is to have a hydroelectric dam nearby for which the electricity is used to convert the tar sands and coal into solid hydrogen fuel cells. Recently on TV was shown a solid hydrogen fuel cell powering a small car that ran well. Archimedes Plutonium www.iw.net/~a_plutonium whole entire Universe is just one big atom where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies Maybe this will be the first lawsuit of its kind regards to Global Warming. The scientific data I am talking about is the amount of energy required to truck a load of petrol from the tar sands of Canada to Elk Point South Dakota versus the amount of energy to pressurize those tar sands and pump them through a pipeline from Canada to Elk Point South Dakota. The question is where is the best place to build a 400,000 barrel per day refinery? Is it better to build it there in situ Canada where the tar sands are mined or is it better to pressurize a pipeline and pump those tar sands all the way down to Elk Point South Dakota. Which takes more energy? The trucking or the pressurized pipeline? I would reckon the pressurized pumping creates more greenhouse gases and thus increases Global Warming versus the trucking of the refined product from Canada. What is more, the pressurized pumping method destroys much of the USA farmlands with their crisscrossing pipelines. I believe the very best method of extracting the energy out of coal and tar sands is to make **solid hydrogen fuel cells**. And although hydrogen fuel cells may be less efficient of extracting energy from coal and tar sands than to outright burn them for generating electricity, that the hydrogen fuel cells have one advantage over all other fuels in that they are easily transported and easily storaged. So I think there is a possibility of a federal lawsuit against both Hyperion and the Governor of South Dakota in that their pursuit of an oil refinery for Elk Point South Dakota contributes to more Global Warming than simply building the refinery up in Canada and trucking the petrol to its destination. Scientists should easily be able to compute which is the more waster of energy and based on that scientific analysis decide whether the 400,000 oil refinery is to be built in Canada or Elk Point South Dakota. Archimedes Plutonium www.iw.net/~a_plutonium whole entire Universe is just one big atom where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies I do not know how the USA strategic oil Reserve is set up and how it is maintained, filled or resupplied of content. I think some of it is located in Kansas but maybe in other states as well. So instead of pressure piping Canadian sludge into the USA to refine and dirty the environment it makes more sense to refine where the tar sands are mined and then to cargo haul by special trains to a location such as Sioux City or Omaha or Des Moines or other places. So instead of building a huge refinery how about building a Reserve and instead of building pipelines that ruin farmlands, build a special railroad that can cargo haul the finished petrol that is refined in Alberta and then railroaded to the RESERVES in the USA. As I said in earlier posts, there is no escape from the science and math. That if it takes more energy to pressurize pipe sludge to the USA rather than refine in Canada and then truck or railroad haul into the USA, that we must go with the less energy route. That way, RESERVES do to the least damage to the environment, and we end up with the fuel we need. And with Global Warming a huge world problem, we can no longer ignore the extra pollution that pipelined refineries create. Actually, I believe Elk Point would be better off with a Nuclear Power Plant than anything dealing with oil or coal. And if some people think I am just a rabble rouser opposed to Oil Refinery, they are mistaken for I would be supportive of a Nuclear Power Plant in Elk Point for we can engineer a clean and safe nuclear power plant but a oil refinery is guaranteed to fill our lungs with carcinogens. Archimedes Plutonium www.iw.net/~a_plutonium whole entire Universe is just one big atom where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies > I do not know how the USA strategic oil Reserve is set up and how it > is maintained, filled or [quoted text clipped - 38 lines] > and safe nuclear power plant but a oil refinery is guaranteed to fill > our lungs with carcinogens. This is the big problem where it will ruin the air in every major city of the USA because oilman will have dictatorial power over where they build their refineries and every major city will have a refinery of piped in sludge from Canada or the coal piped in from coalfields. And where huge pipelines crisscrossing the nation and ruining 1/4 of the farmlands of the country. This is the problem when those seeking profits dictate where refineries are placed and where farms are easement out of their land. Anyone can do the maths. It takes more energy to pressurize a pipe and pump that tar sands into the USA than if the tar sands were refined where it is mined and then railroad the finished fuel into the USA. Building a refinery in Elk Point South Dakota creates far more Global Warming than if the tar sands were refined up in Canada and railroaded the petrol into the USA. Hyperion is living and computing back in a time when oil companies never had to factor in their Global Warming into their math. All Hyperion sees is a huge profit by refining in Elk Point South Dakota. This is because they neglect to do the true maths. The energy wasted by pumping those tar sand sludge increases greenhouse gases and increases global warming. If our Governor of South Dakota, Mr. Mike Rounds and Hyperion or whoever Hyperion is fronting for (Conoco Philips, BP) if they did the proper maths, they would see that building a Elk Point tar sand refinery contributes to more Global Warming than building the refinery in Canada and railroading the finished fuel into the USA. Not only would it save greenhouse gases, but it would save thousands of farmland fields from a pipeline that makes farming a joke. So, please, Mr. Rounds, do your math, or talk to a real scientist who will not liar to you that the oilmen will liar. Find out that refining tar sand sludge increases global warming rather than Canada refining in situ. And find out that you are ruining some of the worlds finest farmland and agriculture by your silly notion of a oil refinery in Elk Point South Dakota. Personally, it is hard for me to believe Mr. Mike Rounds is the governor of South Dakota, but rather the governor of big oil. Archimedes Plutonium www.iw.net/~a_plutonium whole entire Universe is just one big atom where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies |
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