Wood River Refinery

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Wood River Refinery
company WRB Refining, LLC[1]
State Illinois
location Roxana
current capacity 306,000 bpd
projected capacity unknown
project cost $4 billion
project type coker and refinery expansion and ultra low sulfer diesel project

Project Summary

At present, it has the capacity to process 30,000 barrels of blended bitumen per day. EnCana and ConocoPhillips announced a joint venture to do a two-phased, $3.9 billion upgrade to the Wood River refinery to increase overall crude processing capacity to 400,000 bpd and its blended bitumen processing to 200,000 bpd.

Project Detail

Expansion will devote almost all new and existing capacity to tar sand crude. Together with ConocoPhillips' Borger, Texas refinery the company plans to increase total capacity from 450,000 bpd to 600,000 bpd, and increase processing of tar sand oil from 60,000 bpd to 555,000 bpd (that is, almost all of the two refineries' capacity will be devoted to tar sand oil). Thus, this expansion seeks to increase total production capacity of the two refineries by one third, and increase tar sands oil processing capacity by 817%. [1] [2][2] The permit writer is Jason Schnepp (217) 782-2113

Permitting Status

Permits issued. Comment periods expired. "CORE" PSD permit currently being challenged before the U.S. EPA's Environmental Appeals Board (EAB).[2]

Permitting Detail

The "CORE" Project is the major expansion, and that PSD permit was issued to ConocoPhillips on July 19, 2007 - Comment period expired. The "ULSD" Project is a smaller project, and that construction permit (not triggering NSR) was issued to WRB Refining, LLC on June 11, 2007. [[Environmental Integrity Project on behalf of the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council on behalf of the American Bottom Conservancy filed a petition for review of the CORE permit with the U.S. EPA's Environmental Appeals Board (EAB) on Aug. 21, 2007. That case is currently pending before the EAB.

References

  1. On Jan. 3, 2007, ConocoPhillips entered into a joint venture with EnCana Corporation to create a tar sands joint enterprise. The extraction ("upstream") business is known as "FCCL Oil Sands Partnership," and the refining ("downstream") business is known as "WRB Refining LLC." See, e.g., ConocoPhillips 2007 Annual Report at 30. Thus, ConocoPhillips' Wood River Refinery (as well as its refinery in Borger, Texas) is currently owned by "WRB Refining, LLC," whose parent company is ConocoPhillips.
  2. 2.0 2.1 Environmental Integrity Project, "Status of Refinery Air Permitting Actions for Oil Refineries in the United States", May 7, 2008