The Pine Bend Refinery is the largest oil refinery in Minnesota, located in the Twin Cities suburbs of Rosemount and Inver Grove Heights next to southern split of U.S. Highway 52 and Minnesota State Highway 55. The refinery is notable for being the largest in the United States to be located in a state without any oil wells. Overall, it ranks 14th in the country as of January 1, 2005, with an input capacity of 265,000 barrels (42,100 m3) per day . The facility is owned by Flint Hills Resources, a subsidiary of Koch Industries (pronounced the same as "Coke"). It is colloquially referred to as the "Koch Refinery."
The plant was first constructed in 1955 by the Great Northern Oil Company. Koch purchased a controlling interest in the plant in 1969. Since then, capacity has been tripled. In 1986, the refinery was listed as a Superfund site due to groundwater contamination by VOCs, PAHs phenols and lead; along with soil contamination by PAHs and VOCs including benzene, toluene and xylenes. Pine Bend Refinery was removed from the list of Superfund sites after cleanup efforts in June of 1995.
Most petroleum enters and exits the plant through pipelines. Most of the incoming crude oil comes from oil fields in Canada and is brought from the northwest to the facility through the Lakehead and Minnesota pipelines. Additional crude comes from the south via the Wood River Pipeline, though plans are in place to reverse the flow of that line.
The plant has a dedicated pipeline to the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport that provides much of the jet fuel for aircraft. Another major exit route for distilled products is the Wisconsin Pipeline, which brings fuel eastward into the neighboring state. Fuel is also distributed by semi-trailer trucks, railroad cars, and, occasionally, river barges.
As of 2001, Minnesotans were using a total of 7.2 million US gallons (27,000 m3) of gasoline per day, and fuel use continues to climb in the region by about 2% annually. About 70% of the gasoline fuel used in the state comes from Pine Bend and the nearby St. Paul Park Refinery, while most of the rest comes from a combination of the Mandan Refinery in North Dakota, and the Superior Refinery in Superior, Wisconsin. 40 to 50% of Pine Bend's output is used within the state. Flint Hills has recently completed a $100 million expansion to increase capacity at the plant to about 330,000 barrels (52,000 m3) per day.
Famous quotes containing the words pine and/or bend:
“It was the pine alone, chiefly the white pine, that had tempted any but the hunter to precede us on this route.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Young, and so thin, and so straight.
So straight! as if nothing could ever bend her.
But poor men would bend her, and doing things with poor men,
Being much in bed, and babies would bend her over,
And the rest of things in life that were for poor women,
Coming to them grinning and pretty with intent to bend and to kill.”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)