Refinery – Dustin Monke

Meridan Energy Submits Permit to Construct Refinery

BISMARCK – The company planning to build an oil refinery west of Belfield and just three miles from Theodore Roosevelt National Park’s eastern edge has submitted its permit application to the North Dakota Department of Health.

Last Friday, Meridian Energy Group submitted its permit to construct the Davis Refinery as a minor synthetic source of air pollution, said Craig Thorstenson, an environmental engineer who handles permitting for the department’s Division of Air Quality.

The refinery is the first “of its complexity” in history to apply as a minor synthetic source, according to a statement by Meridian. Other refinery projects typically apply as a major source of air pollution.

Meridian’s plans call for the Davis Refinery to eventually refine 55,000 barrels of Bakken crude oil a day. Throughout the process, Meridian officials have said the Davis Refinery will be the most environmentally sustainable refinery ever built. Continue reading “Meridan Energy Submits Permit to Construct Refinery”

Dickinson refinery begins producing fuel from Bakken crude oil

Dakota Prairie Refining plant manager Dave Podratz, left, and MDU Resources public relations manager Tim Rasmussen stand outside the gates of the Dickinson, N.D., refinery on Monday after it started producing its first diesel fuel. (Dustin Monke / The Dickinson Press)

RURAL DICKINSON — Dave Podratz, still wearing his hard hat, safety glasses and coveralls, walked into a conference room at Dakota Prairie Refining’s main office building Monday afternoon and sat a small glass jar containing clear liquid on the table.

The jar is soon to become a keepsake. It contains some of the first diesel fuel created from Bakken crude oil at the refinery facility west of Dickinson.

After more than two years of construction and testing, the approximately $425 million refinery — the first greenfield refinery built in the United States since 1976 — began making product over the weekend and is now storing it in preparation for sale.

“It’s been a long process,” said Podratz, the refinery’s plant manager.

Construction on the facility, which is jointly owned and operated by MDU Resources Group and Calumet Specialty Products Partners, began March 26, 2013, with a groundbreaking at the 318-acre site about four miles west of Dickinson.

Continue reading “Dickinson refinery begins producing fuel from Bakken crude oil”

Gatekeepers of the refinery: Lab chemists play large role in Dakota Prairie Refining

Holly Dalen, laboratory supervisor at Dakota Prairie Refining, shows how to use a flash point analyzer on Thursday inside the lab on the refinery’s site west of Dickinson.

In a windowless room inside of a non-descript steel building at Dakota Prairie Refining’s sprawling facility west of Dickinson, there are six people whose job is to make certain America’s first greenfield refinery built since 1976 turns Bakken crude oil into diesel fuel.

“It’s a chem nerd’s dream,” laboratory technician and chemist Nicole Haller said of the lab where she works on the 375-acre refinery site.

The small lab crew — led by supervisor Holly Dalen of Dickinson — has some of the most important jobs at the refinery, which is in the final stages of testing before ramping up operations.

They already spend each day testing crude oil, diesel fuel and its sulphur levels, as well as other products to be produced by the refinery. They also run constant tests on city wastewater to be used in the refining process.

The lab crew act as the refinery’s gatekeepers. If a product goes in or comes out of the refinery, the lab has its eyes and instruments on it.

Continue reading “Gatekeepers of the refinery: Lab chemists play large role in Dakota Prairie Refining”