As featured in bizjournals.com By Emily Burleson – Reporter, Houston Business Journal
Aug 5, 2022
An El Campo, Texas-based company is considering a new crude refinery project that would bring more than $5.5 billion of investment to a town south of Victoria, which is 125 miles down Highway 59 South from downtown Houston.
A subsidiary of Southern Rock Energy Partners is seeking tax abatements for a proposed 250,000-barrels-per-day refinery in Bloomington that would process the light, sweet crude commonly produced in Texas, according to a document filed with the Texas comptroller’s office and reporting by the Wharton Journal-Spectator.
A facility with 250,000 barrels per day of capacity would rank in the top 30 largest refineries in the U.S., according to Energy Information Administration data.
The subsidiary, called Prairie Energy Partners LLC, said the project would require a minimum investment of nearly $5.56 billion to build in Bloomington, employ as many as 1,250 construction workers at one time, and ultimately create 423 permanent jobs at the site.
The proposed refinery would feature two 125,000-barrels-per-day trains and several elements that Southern Rock said would differentiate it from other Gulf Coast refineries.
Those elements include capturing carbon dioxide emitted by the autothermal reformer, enabling the facility to produce and use blue hydrogen; building a hydrogen/oxygen peaking power plant on-site with 150 megawatt hours of capacity; running the refinery on mostly or entirely zero-carbon electricity; and recycling and repurposing 80% of the wastewater consumed on-site.
Southern Rock is partnering with Lake Charles, Louisiana-based refining technology company UltraFuels on the project, according to the latter’s website.
“With vast refining process experience from its partners and a succinct design, Southern Rock Energy Partners has chosen UltraFuels as a strategic partner in the development of its greenfield refinery project,” said Steven Ward, Southern Rock’s managing member, in a statement on UltraFuels’ website. “By processing the light, shale crudes, the refinery design reduces capital and operating expenses, water consumption, the real estate footprint, and mostly importantly eliminates emissions including carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and sulfur oxide.”
If Southern Rock continues project development in Bloomington, the company said it expects to start construction in the first three months of 2023 and wrap up two years later, starting commercial operations in the first quarter of 2025.
Southern Rock said it would also build 4 million barrels of storage, an eight-bay truck terminal, a barge terminal, and a 200-car rail terminal that would allow for crude deliveries to the refinery and the ability to load the refined products for sale, according to the application.
The application is for tax incentives in Bloomington Independent School District under Chapter 313 of the state tax code.
Southern Rock applied to limit the value of the facility to just $20 million for a decade for the property taxes levied by Bloomington ISD. If the school district and developer make an agreement, and the project moves forward, the tax incentives under Chapter 313 would save Southern Rock tens of millions of dollars.