After hearing the status of a proposed oil refinery, ethanol plant, biodiesel plant and coal-to-liquids conversion plant, Sidney Mayor Brett Smelser asked a question of about 100 people Thursday evening.

“Our question to you is where do we want to go from here?” Smelser queried after about a dozen people shared their views on the energy industry and provided updates on the four projects.

Thursday’s two-hour gathering of the Mon-Dak Energy Alliance at Williston’s Airport International Inn left people buzzing about what they had heard. After asking his question, Smelser said members of the alliance feel it’s probably best to wait until the Montana and North Dakota legislatures complete their sessions before pursuing a serious answer to the question.

Smelser proposed the group meet again in about 60 days in Sidney to continue Thursday’s discussion and possibly set a more firm direction.

The Mon-Dak Energy Alliance is a consortium of interests seeking to develop energy related projects in the Mon-Dak region, commonly referred to as eastern Montana and western North Dakota.� The alliance is lead by Smelser and Williston Mayor Ward Koeser. Dakota Oil Processing LLC of Fargo is proposing a topping plant to process 20,000 barrels per day of Bakken crude oil into diesel fuel and other products. Dakota Oil president Mike Wavra said the firm is working with ENGlobal Engineering of Houston to develop the plant. A facility air permit application is already in front of North Dakota officials.

Wavra said acquiring a site and building the plant carries a $29 million price tag. The firm also is working with the United States Department of Energy to help with the financing.

Meanwhile, Bismarck consultant Larry Stockert gave an overview of the proposed 100,000 barrel-per-day refining plant that is proposed by Northwest Refining Inc. of Williston. Stockert reviewed the detailed financial plan for the project, which is estimated to take four years to build.

He said the plant requires building a pipeline to Spearfish and another pipeline to Minot, with the possibility of the Minot line then going to Fargo.

“We want to take into account all of the oil in the Williston Basin, not just the sweet crude,” Stockert said of the plant’s intention to process light, heavy and sour crude.

He said there is a need for a refinery in the area, as the current obstacles in getting the region’s raw crude to a refinery prompt serious discounts in price to the producers and royalty holders.

“When you have a sweet crude up here that is an exceptionally fine product, why would there be a discount to anybody?” Stockert said.

Along with providing an refining outlet for the oil produced in the region, the plant also would provide $12.5 million in salaries a year, he said.

“From a financial perspective, it appears to me there is a lot to gain,” he said.

As for the ethanol plant, manager Mike Daly of Yellowstone Ethanol LLC said it has all of the necessary permits to build the plant on a proposed site just west of Trenton.

“Once we get our financing we will be up and running,” Daly said.

The ethanol refining process also produces distiller’s grain and carbon dioxide. Daly said they are in discussions with Basin Electric Cooperative in Bismarck to create a branch off its CO2 pipeline from the Great Plains Synfuels Plant north of Beulah to the proposed ethanol plant. It would then run a pipeline into Montana to use the CO2 for oil enhancement efforts.

Daly also said the proposed ethanol plant is to be one of the few in the country to burn coal instead of natural gas, as the plant intends to use coal from Savage, Mont., Daly said.

Meanwhile, Dr. Jerald Bergman, director of the Montana State University Eastern Ag Research Center in Sidney, said the region is one where crops can be grown to produce oil for renewable fuels.

The research center is also studying other biomass options to produce renewable fuels. Bergman said there is even more potential to grow plants to produce oil for biolubricants, which have three to four times the value of biodiesel.

ENGlobal Engineering’s manager of process engineering Gary Reeves then gave an overview of the process behind the coal-to-liquids plant. He said there are definite benefits in having such a facility near an oil refinery, as the syncrudes produced in such a plant are hard to ship if they cool down.

He said the steam that is a byproduct of the plant also can run an electrical plant that generates enough electricity to run the coal-to-liquids plant and much more.

“We’ll have power for other industries or to sell on the grid,” Reeves said.

He said the cost of such a plant that was reviewed in Montana was $2 billion. Reeves also said there has been some interest expressed by the federal government in using its liquid product to be processed into jet fuel.