Salazar Takes Victory Lap for OK of Stalled Refinery 3 Weeks from Election Day
Which made it all the more interesting when Salazar hailed last week’s approval as part of a greater effort “to make sure that we are turning a new page on the relationships between the United States and the nation’s first Americans.”
“President Obama directed me to make sure that the past wrongs of history were righted and that we celebrated and helped in every possible way that we could… the 566 First American Nations move forward,” Salazar added.
“Our tribal-United States relationship where there is a mutual respect between the United States of America and the sovereign nations of this country is something that we are very proud of,” the Interior secretary continued.
But Indian tribes have often been on the short end of due process and accountability in this administration.
In July, Sens. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) demanded that Salazar follow through on mandated reporting requirements and release labor statistics documenting the employment situation in Indian country — particularly as $3 billion in 2009 stimulus funds were targeted for tribal areas.
According to a July 2, 2012, letter from Acting Assistant Secretary Donald Laverdure to Indian tribal leaders, the senators wrote, the 2010 report would not be issued due to “methodology inconsistencies” and the department’s failure to provide clear direction to obtain the specific tribal information for the 2010 report.
“It is unacceptable that reports required by law to be released and the vital information contained therein are being withheld from Congress,” they wrote.
With the Interior Department website bragging about long-term economic development from stimulus investments in the Indian community, there’s no way to measure what benefit may have actually occurred — in communities where, as Laverdure testified before Congress in 2010, unemployment may reach as high as 80 percent.
The following month, Sens. Mark Begich (D-Alaska) and Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) had to urge Obama to comply with a Supreme Court ruling, in Salazar v. Ramah Navajo Chapter, that the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Indian Health Services had been underpaying contracts with Indian tribes going back to 1994.
“The time for litigation is over,” the senators wrote. “As with other recent settlements of historic claims, settlement judgments will be paid directly from the Treasury through the Judgment Fund. Neither the BIA nor the IHS will likely pay these judgments. There is, accordingly, no reason and no excuse for any further delay in resolving these claims.”
“The focus should be on making all Tribes whole, not on continuing litigation,” they stressed. Six other Democrats and Republicans co-signed the plea to Obama.
Still, Obama has been courting the support of increasingly influential and wealthier leaders of Indian tribes.
Tribes have donated about $2.5 million to Obama and $750,000 to Mitt Romney, the Los Angeles Times reported at the end of September.
Bill John Baker, principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, told Obama at a July fundraiser his Oklahoma tribe was owed $50 million in health services contracting costs, the Times reported.
Obama said “Let me look into this and see what we can do” and Baker said he got a follow-up from the White House a week later — never mind that the month before, the Supreme Court had ruled that the administration needed up keep its promises and pay up.
13,000 BPD isn’t a real refinery. It’s a toy. Real refineries start at about 100,000. This normally wouldn’t even be a story.
For a sparsely populated area such as the Dakotas, with a light sweet crude source, this is a handy sized refinery and will likely be very profitable. If I am not mistaken the local crude is around 40 API gravity so not much needs to be done with it other than a hydroskimming type refinery with nothing more than crude and reformer units.
There is not pipeline capacity to ship products to markets in other states, so this is an ideal size.
“Real” refineries, in my opinion, are not by capacity but by complexity and product streams. A 300,000 bpd crude unit really is rather simple with not many more employees than one of 1,000 bpd capacity.
The point is, this isn’t a big deal no matter how you slice it. It probably makes economic sense because they are suddenly awash in crude, but is this a big, huge expansion in national refining capacity, like Salazar is tooting? No.
Take off that cowboy hat you pansy!
Ha! Got that right, the only callouses Buckaroo Salazar has are on his pud.
I wasn’t aware that it was a medical condition.
Thanks, Dr. Frank.
I guess the pud alliance covers this, no?
Why don’t you just make your point? I take it you’re a liberal/progressive whatever. So you have to play word games.
All hat, no cattle.
(Sung to the immortal aviator’s tune: big watch, little richard.)
White Eyes Salazar plenty big liar. Thinks Red Man very dumb.
More proof that the federal government is too large, and too intrusive. First new refinery in 30 years? You can’t tell me that this is the ONLY refinery that has been proposed in the last 30 years, so what happened to the others?
It took just shy of 10 years for this one to clear all the required regulatory hurdles to be built. And according to poster 1. it’s a toy. The message to oil companies is loud and clear. If you want a new refinery don’t plan on building in the US. It will be too costly and too painful only to be denied. Build in a friendlier country and have 8 years active production before the US even gets around to denying your request.
If the leftists ever get their thumbs off’n the scales, just watch it all soar into the stratosphere.
I’m afraid it will take firepower to do that. They are immune to reason, and will defend utter stupidity to the very death.
I say, “Oblige them”.
Even threatening to oblige them should do it. They’re pussies.
Be prepared.
Nil Desparandum!
Why is he in the cabinet, when he CANNOT POSSIBLY be an actual LESBIAN?
I, as a member of the LGBTFROKJNGDFRT alliance, wish to enter my ABSOLUTE PROTEST AGAINST THIS INVASION OF MY VAGINA!
(By the way, don’t waste your time figuring out what all the letters mean. I have a day job.)
Whoa! Somebody needs to take their meds!
“that hike being attributable to increased production on private lands while federal leases are stymied.”
Mittens and Ryan need to hammer this theme. The production Bam-Bam is so proudly boasting of is the production he was not able to stop. And he would dearly love to.
Somebody’s seriously confused. Hydrofracking has zip to do with refining. Refining is what you do to the crude after it’s been fracked out of the ground.
This little toy refinery is just to process some of the copious local crude to serve the local market. In the big picture, it’s a pimple on the industry’s butt. The big story is the fracking technology making North Dakota the second largest crude oil producer in the country. None of the fracking regs have anything to do with this little refinery.
I think the writer was referring to those attempting to restrict hydrofracking, which in turn would make the refinery non-viable.
There is a general problem within the bureaucracy that those imposing the rules have limited or no direct experience in matters over which they have authority. They’re simply bureaucrats or, at best, lawyers with an ideological bent. I got into a discussion over global warming and the need for at least a modicum of skepticism when a young woman interjected the “everyone knows” assertion. Her claim to authority? “I’m an environmental lawyer.” No background in climate sciences, atmospheric physics, etc., just a law degree. And people like her are writing the rules.