Waste oil refinery to open here

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This article was published 26/11/2009 (5300 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A new, one-of-a-kind waste oil refinery is to open early next year in Manitoba that will convert used motor oil and other waste petroleum products into clean diesel fuel.

The refinery will be owned and operated by fledgling Winnipeg company HD-Petroleum. It should be up and running by next March on land adjacent to Miller Environmental Corp.’s hazardous waste facility on Highway 75, about 70 kilometres south of Winnipeg.

HD-Petroleum founder Todd Habicht told a Winnipeg conference on emerging environmental issues Thursday the plant will produce diesel fuel that is not only clean enough to burn in trucks and other vehicles, but will also generates more power, can be used at lower temperatures and has a longer storage life than conventional diesel fuel.

Habicht didn’t say how much diesel fuel the refinery will produce, how much the facility will cost to build or how many people it will employ.

He said in an interview details will be announced within the next week or two.

Several oil industry officials said although there are two other refineries in Canada that re-refine used motor oil, they convert it into a new oil product, not diesel fuel. The executive director of the industry-sponsored organization that runs the province’s oil recovery program — Manitoba Association for Resource Recovery Corp. (MARRC) — said the HD-Petroleum refinery will be a welcome development for the province.

“This is solid. This is a good thing,” Ron Benson said. “Any time we can have another approved, licensed place to send our used oil, it’s a good thing. And it’s in Manitoba, so that’s more good news.”

The HD-Petroleum facility received a Dangerous Goods Handling and Transportation Act licence from the province on Sept. 10.

Benson said Manitoba produces about 16 million litres of used motor oil a year, and about 12 million of that is recycled. Some of it is used locally in the production of asphalt, some is shipped to the other two Canadian oil re-refineries, and some is shipped to the United States. “This will be one more option (for the local companies who collect and sell the used oil),” he said.

The refinery will be located about halfway between Letellier and St. Jean in the RM of Montcalm. Reeve Roger Vermette said the municipal council hasn’t been told how many people will be employed at the facility.

But aside from the new jobs that are created, “just getting that (used motor oil) out of the area and turning it into usable diesel fuel is a plus,” Vermette said. He said he understands a number of local trucking companies have already agreed to buy diesel fuel from the refinery, “so it should be a win-win for everyone.”

Benson said although he doesn’t know the scale of the project, it will be a significant operation requiring “a major amount of equipment.”

Habicht said the refinery has already been assembled and tested in another province. It will be dismantled, hauled here and reassembled at the new location beginning in January.

Habicht has been working on the refinery project for the last four years. Prior to that, the Saskatoon native and entrepreneur owned and operated a number of cellphone stores in Manitoba. He said it was his inventor grandfather who came to him with the idea of building a refinery that could convert waste petroleum into diesel fuel. After researching the subject, he became convinced it was economically feasible.

murray.mcneill@freepress.mb.ca