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Hyperion releases options for 5,000 acres
News Articles | Sioux City Journal | Michele Linck | March 07, 2010
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ELK POINT, S.D. — Hyperion Refining filed documents with the Union County Register of Deeds this week, releasing the purchase options it has held since as early as 2007 on 22 parcels of land totaling nearly 5,000 acres.
The released land was among more than 13,000 acres for which the Texas company bought purchase options as it worked to assemble for a 4,000-acre site on which to build a $10 billion oil refinery/energy center. Hyperion remains in possession of options on 6,300 acres, company spokesman Eric Williams said Saturday by e-mail.
The recent filings sparked speculation that the company had let go of optioned land along the Missouri River and therefore had abandoned the idea of getting the 12 million gallons of water per day it will need from shallow wells it said it may build there.
Williams said that Hyperion has retained its options on the land along the river and on the 3,292-acre refinery footprint several miles away. He said getting water from wells near the river “remains very much a possibility.” Even so, he added that the river is just one of “several alternatives” the company continues to explore as its source of water.
‘I really didn’t believe’
Florence Williams is one of four owners of a 160-acre tract for which release documents were recorded this week. She said Saturday they received notice of the option release in the mail last summer. She said Hyperion had not asked whether they wanted to be released, but took the action on its own. She said the land is currently being farmed.
“I’m glad to be rid of (the purchase option). I really didn’t believe in the (refinery) in the first place,” she said. “I don’t understand their way of doing things.” Williams said her parcel of land is west of the now-defined footprint, but was very near a site that appeared to be Hyperion’s preference early in the process.
Options expire in August
Hyperion settled last summer on the parameters of a site about seven miles north of Elk Point. In August, it released its options on roughly 6,000 acres it no longer needed. All the recorded option contracts were set for renewal on each Aug. 31 over a period of three years ending this coming summer unless the owners resign or the company buys the land.
Williams acknowledged that Hyperion’s real estate representatives have recently begun talking with landowner about extending those options. “The conversations are going well and the property owners are solidly behind the project,” he said.
Williams said the environmental permitting process does not require that it buy the land this year. While the landowners of the dropped options were reportedly all notified by certified mail last August, the company did not record those releases at the courthouse at that time. South Dakota law requires only that land sales to be filed with the Register of Deeds, but not purchase options.
The paperwork for the release of the 22 purchase options was filed Monday by Daniel J. Harmelink, of the Woods Fuller Shultz and Smith law firm, in Sioux Falls. Hyperion worked through the Elk Point Economic Development Corp., to buy the options, which are filed in the development corporation’s name.
Tagged with: south dakota, hyperion, refinery, union county
