Green Fuels breaks ground on 30,000-b/d Oklahoma refinery project

Green Fuels Operating, a Clean Refineries Inc. company, has broken ground on a proposed $400-million refinery in Duncan, Okla., on the site of a former Sunray Oil Co./Tosco Corp. refinery that ceased operations in 1983.

The refinery is designed with an initial crude processing capacity of 30,000 b/d, expandable to 50,000 b/d, and will include storage capacity of up to 1 million bbl. Planned products include gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, kerosene, naphtha, and asphalt.

The refinery will employ proprietary hydrocarbon processing technology incorporating flash-vacuum separation and a closed-loop emissions capture system designed to improve processing efficiency and reduce hydrocarbon emissions, the company said.

The site’s redevelopment follows an extended remediation and transfer process involving the US Environmental Protection Agency, the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality, and former owner liability work completed by ConocoPhillips. State certification for brownfield redevelopment, subject to recorded institutional controls, enabled the return of industrial activity to the site.

The development represents one of the few US grassroots refining projects announced in recent decades. Most domestic refining capacity growth since the 1980s has come through expansions, debottlenecking projects, and upgrades at existing sites rather than construction of new refineries.