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Sioux City Journal: We support a 'yes' vote in Union County
May 25, 2008

Sioux City Journal

For all of us, life is about making decisions. The biggest of them follow careful consideration of potential benefits versus possible risks.

Nine days from today, decision time arrives in Union County, S.D., on the proposal by Dallas, Texas, based Hyperion Resources, Inc. to build an oil refinery north of Elk Point.

Based on nearly a year of reporting, reading, listening, studying and learning related to the subject, we believe the economic benefits for our entire tri-state region of the $10 billion energy center outweigh concerns.

Therefore, we support a "yes" vote in Union County on June 3 which would rezone some 3,200 acres of farmland so Hyperion could proceed with those plans.

We respect reasonable, committed and passionate opponents who fear the project because of worries about pollution, health and way of life. In particular, we sympathize with those residents whose property wasn't purchased by Hyperion and who would live in closest proximity to the refinery. Because it quite literally would be in their backyard, no one would be affected personally more than them.

Of this, there can be no doubt: Union County - and, in the larger picture, Siouxland as a whole - would change significantly as a result of the refinery. We believe the change largely would be positive.

In the end, our support is based on the profound, powerful, perhaps transformational economic impact - in ways both direct and indirect - a project like this would have on our region. Dramatic economic growth of the kind produced by the refinery would reverberate throughout Siouxland, translating into additional jobs, higher wages and purchasing power, increased consumer choices, more revenue for government entities to use in the delivery of important services, and lower taxes. The result would be an overall improvement in quality of life - for those of us who live and work here today and for our children and grandchildren who we don't wish to see move away tomorrow.

At a challenging economic time in our nation when communities compete intensely for even small companies, we have in Hyperion the kind of development opportunity we can't afford to watch go somewhere else. If South Dakota and Union County were in direct financial competition with other sites for capital investment of this magnitude, they likely would need to provide hundreds of millions of dollars in incentives. To our knowledge, Hyperion so far has asked for no incentives from state or local government.

Because of rising global demand, production of energy offers more long-term benefit and return on investment for a local economy than any other kind of development project, according to Bill Fruth, president of Palm City, Fla., based Policom Corp., who provided an economic analysis of the Sioux City metropolitan area for The Siouxland Initiative.

Fruth predicted the annual average of 4,500 jobs planned by Hyperion during the four-year refinery construction phase would create a significant number of local spinoff jobs. The 1,800 permanent jobs envisioned by the company, Fruth said, can be expected to spin off into some 14,000 additional permanent jobs within an hour's drive of the refinery. Almost every conceivable sector of the economy would benefit. From food service to real estate to health care to the financial sector to car and truck dealers to hotels to general merchandise stores to, yes, newspapers, and on and on, businesses would enjoy millions and, in some cases, tens of millions of additional transactions during construction and following startup.

We remember well the energy and excitement computer-maker Gateway Inc. infused into this metro area in so many different ways when it employed nearly 6,000 workers in North Sioux City, S.D., at its peak in the 1990s. We haven't been quite the same community since Gateway began its decline.

In 2007, Sioux City metro ranked 280th of 363 metropolitan statistical areas in the country in terms of overall strength, Fruth said. Without Hyperion, he not only foresees "extremely limited" chances for improvement on that ranking, but envisions a more likely scenario of gradual economic decline over the next 10 to 15 years.

The Hyperion project has positive implications for the nation, as well. The proposed Union County refinery would serve American economic, strategic and national security interests of creating more refining capacity, refining oil in a new geographic region and weaning ourselves from Middle Eastern sources of oil.

No new oil refinery has been built anywhere in the United States since 1976. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina shut down 20 percent of American refining capacity in a single day, resulting in an average 45-cents-per-gallon hike in gas prices in one week. Oil for the Hyperion refinery would be shipped by pipeline from Alberta, Canada - a friendly neighbor to our north with vast reserves. If no one in this country partners with Alberta, someone in a competing economic and military superpower surely will.

At the center of the debate about Hyperion has been the company's pledge to build a "green" refinery friendly to the environment. We share worries about our water and air. After all, we live here, too. Will the refinery produce emissions? Absolutely, but we believe the expertise and technology exists today for the construction of a facility that, according to South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds, "is not your grandfather's refinery." In El Segundo, Calif., Journal staffers witnessed firsthand how a community, the environment and an oil refinery comparable to the one proposed by Hyperion can co-exist with one another.

Like Citizens for Hyperion, we support the refinery exactly as described and proposed by Hyperion and we trust the process and its system of checks and balances that the company would be required to navigate after rezoning was approved. State and federal officials would, we believe, hold Hyperion's feet to the fire through the permitting phase and beyond in terms of meeting all environmental standards and laws. South Dakota's governor has pledged nothing less. If Hyperion decided not to build the refinery, the land would revert back to being zoned for agriculture, according to Doyle Karpen, chairman of the county Board of Commissioners.

Our support - and, we hope, the state of South Dakota's support - would end if Hyperion wished at some future point to change what it has proposed to build.

Nearly one year after the "Gorilla" was formally identified, the people of Union County will decide if this story ends or continues, and that is as it should be. A process we have found to be proper, open, public and informative has taken place. Procedures have been followed; multiple forums and hearings have been conducted by company officials, citizen proponents, project opponents and county government; an endless number of questions have been asked, voluminous amounts of information have been provided, and thousands of pages of data have been filed. Union County residents, we believe, are as prepared as they can be for this far-reaching decision.

As we approach the historic vote, are we devoid of concerns? Of course not. No one on either side of this complicated, emotional debate can speak with virtual certainty about the future. Still, after a yearlong examination of all aspects, we are convinced construction of the Hyperion refinery is in our best interests and something we should not let slip away.

The pivotal 20th-century Indian leader, Jawaharlal Nehru, once said: "The policy of being too cautious is the greatest risk of all."

That perhaps best sums up our view of the opportunity that Hyperion represents.