The South Dakota refinery, 400,000 bbls/day, is designed to convert Alberta Oil Sands crude into low-sulfur fuels. Hyperion plans to break ground for the project in 2010, on 3300 acres of farm land.
Applications have yet to be submitted to local, state and federal officials. Legal actions against it seem to be brewing in spite of its approval by local Union County voters.
See article in gas2.org, June 4, 2008

Most new refineries have been built abroad, 1. to refine crude close to source, 2. Lower costs, 3. fewer regulations and restrictions. In the future, probably most oil will be shipped in the refined state.

SaudiAramco and Mobil have collaborated on a new sophisticated refinery currently putting through 400,000 bbl/day, but there are plans to increase the size. www.samref.com. A similar plant is operated with Shell.
With Sumitomo of Japan, SaudiAramco has built a refinery and is building a large refinery-petrochemical plant.
It owns refineries in several countries.
Overall, the Saudi-owned Saudi Aramco refines 2.05 million bpd domestically and 1.6 million bpd overseas.

It takes time to develop a new plant. Getting the various levels of government to agree on any action can go on and on.
Pipelines must be built to gather the hydrocarbons. Again, deals must be made with landowners affected by the line, governments must approve, etc. Of course one hopes that development of the resource by drilling, mining or whatever will procede smoothly without roadblocks. AND, everyone hopes, that the initial go-ahead, based on a few test wells or digs, and small-scale engineering studies, was based on accurate assessment of the prospect and its development.