It’s kind of funny, in a sad sort of way.

You’re a hard working, intelligent, pretty, and blonde state legislator.

You merely suggest an idea is worth studying and Neanderthals come out of the woodwork to:

1. Attribute a position to you that you have not taken; and
2. Accuse you of being stupid because you are a woman.

The South Dakota War College put up an excerpt of an Argus Leader story on a legislative summer study committee’s examination of alternatives to the gasoline tax that has lead to major headaches for Rep. Shantel Krebs, R-Sioux Falls.

An excerpt:

“In other states and nationally, everybody has their hands in the air, saying, ‘What are we doing here?’ ” Krebs said.

She suggests a vehicle miles tax modeled after an Oregon pilot program, which the panel will hear more about in September, is worth study. The program involves a tracking device in a vehicle that records travel. A per-mile tax is charged to target the cost of roads to the vehicles that are using them the most.

A careful reading would indicate that Rep. Krebs did not say she supported the measure but that she merely thought the Oregon program was “worth study.” Did she say she was for it, sponsoring it or anything else? No. Like a prudent legislator, she said she merely wanted to study it.

But what was the reaction on the War College? In a word, ugly. I’ll ignore the substantive criticisms and provide a view of the more vitriolic and personal attacks:

Would Shantel allow a device to monitor the use of a woman’s uterus to help prevent unwanted pregnancies?

Of course not. This is equally as ridiculous. Take her out behind the Republican woodshed for the switch.

4 Just Wondering..

Shantel, what’s it cost to purchase, install and monitor? Sounds like a way to ding people with fuel efficient cars.

I’d rather hear a saxaphone duet by her and Opie than any more on this idea.

7 anonymous

Tee Hee! Math and Civil Rights are hard!

8 Just Wondering..

She needs some shoes that fit right

12 anonymous

How many blonds does it take to raise a gas tax…

21 anonymous

Alas, where are the feminists when a woman legislator and leader gets excoriated because of her looks? But perhaps more interestingly, why are Republican commentators—male I’ll bet—so quick to eat one of their own and take her to task and not even really read what she said.

The Republican tribe is a very tough bunch—particularly on its female members. Don’t you dare be thoughtful, smart, or bright if you are a woman. Instead, you ought to be home barefoot and pregnant and leavin’ that legislatin’ stuff to the men. I’m just sayin’.

Technorati Tags: Shantel Krebs, S.D. Legislature, fuel tax, gas tax, highways, South Dakota

CNN recently did a seven minute mini-documentary on the proposed Hyperion Refinery in Union County.

To view: http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/business/2008/07/14/griffin.hyperion.energy.short.cnn?iref=mpvideosview

In a word, the CNN report comes down as “skeptical” about the project.

Some highlights:

• The report mentions the lawsuit against Albert Huddleston by a former trustee of the Hunt Family Trust.
• The report mentions all of Huddleston’s investments not working out.
• Huddleston submitted a tape of “answers” to CNN which was elusive at best. (A Hyperion officer did talk on screen.)
• The mayor of Elk Point said that Huddleston told her—privately—that he has the $10B in financing in place. That would actually be news if true.
• Farmer Dale Harkness spoke on behalf of opponents. He probably has one of the most attractive farms in South Dakota. Wow.

Check it out and make your own conclusions.

Technorati Tags: CNN, Union County, Elk Point, Hyperion, refineries, oil, Albert Huddleston

I wasn’t able to grab a photo of the object of this post so you’ll have to do with my description.

All Star Pizza delivers pizza in Harrisburg. The owner used to use a car to make deliveries. He now uses a scooter with a big tub strapped to the back to carry pizzas about town.

He said it now costs him $5/week for gas to deliver pizzas instead of $50.

I thought it was not only a great way to beat high gas prices but also very “green”—and great marketing.

Way to go All Star Pizza! These are the types of decisions that high fuel prices are forcing us to make. But the changes can also be for the better.

Technorati Tags: All Star Pizza, Harrisburg, South Dakota, pizza, pizza delivery, saving gasoline, scooters.

While here in the Kansas Oil Patch with my father who used to work in the Kansas Oil Patch, we've had quite a view discussions about the oil patch.

I learned today from Rodney that a former boss of mine is working with a group to redevelop the 21st Street industrial area of Wichita where there is an old MBPLX meet packing plant--and guess what!--an old Derby oil refinery.

The Derby site, like the previously mentioned Augusta site (and another in El Dorado, the former home of the Pester refinery) are already "brownfields." In other words, contaminated.

So, why does it make sense to tear up some of the best farm land in the USA in Union County, put a refinery there, and pollute another big plot of ground? There are plenty of former refinery sites right here in Kansas. They also have the infrastructure in place right now to hook into oil crude lines. They also have a trained work force.

Expand the search of brownfields across the nation and there are probably tens if not hundreds of similar sites. Even a green refinery is a messy business. That's just the nature of hydrocarbons.

Why not redevelop a former refinery site that already needs cleaning up rather than polluting productive farm land?

Like I've said, I'm undecided about a refinery in Union County. I understand the need for oil and refined products and even refineries. But I don't count myself as a fan of Hyperion. And I don't understand making a new mess before cleaning up an old one. My momma taught me that.

Technorati Tags: Gorilla Project, Hyperion, Union County, Elk Point, South Dakota, oil refineries, brownfields

My father Rodney just cuts to it.

We’re eating breakfast today in Kansas and he simply announces, “You know, in Aurora, Nebraska (the county seat of the county he grew up in), they have a beautiful new hospital, nursing home, museum, and a library twice as big as we have here in Augusta.”

“Okay Dad, what’s you’re point” as a slurpped my Life cereal and raisins.

“The oil companies and refineries left nothing for Augusta and El Dorado. They just took and took and took and gave nothing back.”

Mobil was the refinery owner for years here in Augusta. There’s no Mobil Community Center or Mobil Park or Mobil Arts Center, or anything. Just a rusting pile of refinery towers and tanks and a mini-Superfund site of noxious chemicals.

El Dorado, just up the road and once the home of Getty and Texaco, has done little better.

Throw in oil barons and others who made a killing here in the south central Kansas “oil patch” and you see little civic corporate responsibility and generosity.

Which leads me, round aboutly, to that putative refinery in our own South Dakota backyard, Hyperion.

Now mind you, I’m still undecided about the refinery. Actually, I don’t think it will ever be built, at least by Hyperion. They don’t have the money, the expertise, or the mojo. But let’s play fantasy and say they do.

Back here in Kansas, while Mobil and Getty may not have been the best of corporate citizens, they did provide really good jobs for a number of years. And hey, if you like to drive, you gotta have oil refineries.

Will Hyperion be like a Wells Fargo that donated big bucks to the Cinedome at the Sioux Falls Washington Pavilion and is a supporter of the arts? Will it be a First Premier (ala T. Denny Sanford) and support health care and sports?

Will it even be on the order of a robber baron like George Hearst in Lead, where Homestake built a beautiful opera house and a YMCA?

El Dorado and August, Kansas are nice communities. But they could have been so much better, as my Dad suggested, if the corporations and others who extracted and refined all the oil around here would have put something back into their communities like the doctors, lawyers, farmers, publishers, and others of his boyhood county seat of Aurora. And like many of the corporate citizens we have in Sioux Falls.

Will Hyperion “take and take and take” like their Kansas cousins?

If the Kansas oil patch is instructive, don’t expect a different result.

Technorati Tags: Hyperion, Union County, Gorilla Project, oil refineries, oil companies, El Dorado, Augusta, Kansas, Elk Point, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Getty, Mobil, Texaco

Way back on February 13, 2007, recent GOP U.S. Senate candidate and Spearfish businessman Sam Kephart wrote the following about the future of oil and gasoline prices, right here in the virtual “pages” of South Dakota Watch.

Global demand will exceed available supplies in the very near future. This will result in gasoline prices doubling, or even tripling, and create a lot of unrest here at home.

Wild cards in all of this are the Athabasca Tar sands in northern Alberta , Canada and our own huge supply of domestic coal. However, these truly plentiful hydrocarbons are not liquid assets and will require expensive mining and cracking to create clean burning synfuel.

What was the price of gasoline in February 2007? In the $2/gallon plus range.

Sam called it pretty darn close. Unfortunately, he was right, with gasoline prices today near or over $4/gallon.

He also was prescient about TransCanada deal in a roundabout way.

Pehaps we should pay a little more attention to our friend in Spearfish.

Technorati Tags: oil, gasoline, fuel prices, gasoline price, oil price, energy, Sam Kephart, South Dakota Watch

Let’s see. Let’s play a little game of “Is John McCain the Next Bob Dole?” (home edition):

• War hero. Check.
• Grumpy. Check.
• Republican. Check.
• Senator. Check.
• From a state that doesn’t play a major role in Presidential Elections. Check.
  
• Good sense of humor. Check.
• Once described as independent minded. Check.
• Old. Check.
• His time for national prominence has come and gone. Check.
• Close ties to a Bush. Check.
  
• Married a yonger, hottie wife. Check.
• Hikes up his pants and yells at kids to get off his yard. Check.
• Loses big in the popular vote and Electoral College in run for Presidency against a younger, hipper Democrat? Check.

Yes, John McCain is the new Bob Dole.

(Hat tip to Sibby Online for the idea.)

Technorati Tags: Bob Dole, John McCain

And as a child of a petroleum pipeliner and a former petroleum pipeline summer employee, I have at least a small understanding of the oil and refining businesses.

I don't think petroleum or petroleum companies are inherently evil. If you like to drive, you need gas. And we all can't have backyard refineries.


However, just like Sen. John McCain's gas tax holiday idea for this summer vacation season, Pres. George W. Bush's idea to drill off shore and in the Alaskan Arctic are just short-term ideas that pander but don't provide long-term solutions.

From the Wall Street Journal:

President Bush called on Congress to lift a ban on offshore oil and gas drilling that has been in place since 1981, saying lagging domestic production has contributed to sharply higher gasoline prices. He also urged Democratic lawmakers to drop their opposition to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and proposed streamlining the permit process for building new refining capacity in the U.S.

Separately, the White House said Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman will be attending a one-day meeting of oil producers in Saudi Arabia.

For more information, see:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121379512215184123.html?mod=djemalertNEWS

Oil will continue to be part of the energy equation for the foreseeable future. But the sooner the United States embarks on meaningful government funded research and development on biofuels, hydrogen, solar, wind, and other "green" energy solutions, we will continue to be held hostage by exorbitant fuel prices, multi-national corporations, unfriendly foreign governments--and our own laziness and lack of will.

Had we actually taken Pres. Jimmy Carter's warnings to heart about energy independence in the late 1970s (Yes, I know it's not cool to mention anything positive about Pres. Carter), frankly, we wouldn't be in the current fix.

But while 30 years ago would have been the best time to plant the energy independence "tree," the next best time is now. But Pres. Bush--ironically, considering his name--is not interested in planting "trees."

That will have to wait for a Pres. Barack Obama.

Technorati Tags: energy, fuel prices, offshore drilling, ANWR, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, oil

Kansas Gas Prices provided by GasBuddy.com

Click here to add this map to your website.

Technorati Tags: gasoline prices, gas prices

I was talking to a fellow University of Houston Law Center LL.M. grad and buddy of mine who has spent a large chunk of his life in the oil business in Texas, first as a "land man" for Standard Oil in the 1970s and 80s and later as an oil and gas attorney in Victoria, Ft. Worth, and now Houston, Texas.

I asked him if he had ever heard of Hyperion, the company that may build a refinery near Elk Point.

His answer: No.

He did say there are a lot of oil companies, drillers, etc. in Texas that he hasn't heard of and that some big companies operate under names even he might not recognize.

But don't you find it just a bit odd that someone well-versed in the oil business in Texas has never heard of Hyperion?

Just something else that makes you want to go "hmmmm" about the project.

Technorati Tags: Hyperion, oil business, refineries, Texas, Elk Point, South Dakota, Gorilla Project

Apparently Gov. Mike Rounds thinks he is the king of the realm called South Dakota and just thinks he can impose tax by whim. 

The South Dakota Democratic Party and State Senate Minority Leader Scott Heidepriem tell King Mike he has no clothes on this issue. 

CAMPAIGN 2008 UPDATE - From South Dakota Democratic Party

Rounds violates separation of power with double tax

At the bottom of this email is the press release issued Monday by Sen. Scott Heidepriem at his press conference with Sen. Sandy Jerstad regarding Gov. Mike Rounds’ decision to impose an illegal tax on ethanol. 

Briefly, Rounds issued a revenue department memo to ethanol dealers telling them they would pay a new tax if they sell gas through blender pumps.  There are only 17 stations in South Dakota using blender pumps, and more that are installing them at this time.  What blender pumps do is offer consumers an easy way to create higher blends of cheaper ethanol with their gasoline beyond the commonly available E-10.  A consumer presses a button on the pump, and the hose puts E-20 in the tank.  Or you can select E-30, because it automatic combines E-85 with E-10 to give you the correct mixture.

Here’s the problem.  Station owners pay the tax on E-10 and E-85 when they receive shipments.  What Rounds seeks to do with his memo is tax your ethanol one more time because it is being mixed.  That is, simply, a double tax.

Here’s the next problem.  Rounds can not constitutionally and legally impose a new tax that was not created by the S.D. Legislature.  In fact, Rounds tried twice during the 2008 Legislature with Senate Bill 110 to increase the state tax on ethanol, and both times it was defeated in the Senate Taxation
Committee.

Since using the front door didn’t work, Rounds decided to pull a trick on consumers, ethanol dealers and the State Constitution by imposing an additional tax on blends of E-10 and E-85 — fuel products which are ALREADY TAXED.

Here’s what we’re hearing around the state:

- Ethanol dealers are upset and angry with this.  Some have indicated they will ignore the revenue department directive.  If Rounds gets pushy, they may take Rounds to court — and would probably win easily.  One dealer said he was installing blender pumps, but Rounds’ new double tax makes him uneasy about the big investment.

- Consumers are upset.  They are scared of $4 a gallon gas, and now Mike Rounds wants to increase fuel taxes.

- Tourism leaders are concerned about higher state fuel taxes immediately before the tourism season begins.  Rounds’ new double tax sends the wrong message about South Dakota tax policy, especially as gas prices soar up to $4 per gallon.

- Farmers and bio-fuels proponents are angry.  Blender pumps used commercially to blend bio-fuels first appeared in South Dakota at the Four Seasons Cooperative in Britton and then the Sioux Valley Cooperative CENEX on the east side of Watertown.  They believe blender pumps will dramatically
increase the use of South Dakota-grown ethanol because they are easy to use.

Rounds’ new double-tax is viewed as an attack on blender pump use, which could catch on across the nation as prices per gallon rise to $4 per gallon.

- Legal experts say Rounds’ directive is just a memo — not a legal tax.  Since Rounds lacks legal authority to impose a tax without it first passing the legislature, the directive is non-binding.  What’s worse is Rounds failed to get this tax passed a few months ago in the Senate, which demonstrates that he knows he is acting without legislative authority.

Remember studying American government in school when the teacher said the legislature appropriates and the executive branch implements?  Rounds must have missed class that day because he apparently believes he has the power to create new taxes.  Even Republican legislator Hal Wick knows better, as quoted in today’s Argus Leader saying Rounds’ action may be unconstitutional.

Richard A. Hauffe
Executive Director
South Dakota Democratic Party

Technorati Tags: ethanol, taxation, South Dakota, Mike Rounds, Scott Heidepriem, South Dakota Democratic Party

KELOLAND reports today that the AVERAGE price of gas in SD is $3.50/gallon.

• Read: Cutting Back Because Of Gas Prices
  

This has been a favorite theme of SD Watch since the 2004 election, when John Thune blamed Sen. Tom Daschle for high gasoline prices, when gas was a whopping $1.60/gallon. Here’s a classic from SDW in 2005 on the issue:

• Read: The High Cost of the Bush Administration and John Thune Just Got Higher

So, under Thunian logic, if Daschle allowing a few cents increase in gasoline prices was his “fault” during Tom’s watch, then John must be liable for the doubling-plus of gas prices since 2005 when he took office.

Fair’s fair. I’m just sayin’.

Photo: Ah, the good old days of under $3/gallon gasoline. Photo taken Tuesday, August 16, 2005, at the now defunct Harrisburg, SD Food N Fuel.

Technorati Tags: John Thune, Tom Daschle, gasoline prices, fuel prices, 2004 election, George W. Bush

This morning’s Sioux City Journal has a lengthy and well done story on the upcoming June 3d vote on the zoning changes made for the proposed Hyperion refinery in Union County.

Union County braces for battle over Hyperion - Sioux City Journal
30/03/08 01:43 from hyperion refinery - Google News
Union County braces for battle over Hyperion Sioux City Journal, IA - 2hours ago Three grassroots groups — Citizens for Hyperion , which backs the refinery , and Save Union County and Citizens Opposed to Oil Production, which…

The story focuses primarily on the campaigns for and against the zoning changes.

My own view on the project remains mixed. Pipelines and refineries are what helped fuel my father’s well paid jobs when I was a kid. I’ve worked for a pipeline and around refineries. I like the good paying jobs. I don’t like the smell and noise of refineries. I like gasoline for my car. I also realize we need to develop more alternative energy sources.

My biggest concern is about Hyperion. Unlike BP, ConocoPhillips, or even TransCanada, they have no track record for this sort of thing. Can they actually pull this off?

I don’t know.

The voters in Union County have a difficult vote to make in June.

 

Union County graphic by ArkyBot used under GNU Free Documentation license and Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license versions 2.5, 2.0, and 1.0

Technorati Tags: Hyperion, Union County, refineries, pipelines, 2008 election, petroleum, environment, South Dakota

I have a notebook full of notes and several photos from last night's Lincoln County Democratic Party meeting which featured environmental engineer Karen Hall's research and analysis of the proposed Hyperion Refinery near Elk Point.

She gave an excellent, fact-filled talk that came down on opposition to the facility.  I'll have a full story later today.  In the meantime, KTIV-TV from Sioux City showed up and did a story.  Here's their coverage:

Engineer: Hyperion Energy Center 'Not The Answer' To High Fuel Prices - KTIV
28/01/08 15:26 from Gorilla Project
KTIV Engineer: Hyperion Energy Center 'Not The Answer' To High FuelPrices KTIV, IA - 2 hours ago On the other side of the coin, HyperionResources says their oil refinery would be the cleanest in the nation.

Photo: Karen Hall, SDSM&T chemistry and chemical engineering graduate and former refinery compliance engineer from Rapid City, points to the tons of pollution that a refinery the size of the proposed Hyperion Refinery would produce.  She spoke to the Lincoln County Democratic Party last night at their monthly meeting in Canton.


Technorati Tags: Karen Hall, oil refineries, crude oil, Hyperion, Hyperion refinery, Gorilla Project, Elk Point, South Dakota, Canton, Lincoln County Democratic Party

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