Refineries on the Yellowstone: Billings as an Energy City

Drive east out of downtown Billings toward the airport and you will see them: the stacks and tanks and flare towers of the petroleum refineries that line the south bank of the Yellowstone River. They have been part of this landscape for nearly a century, and they are a large part of why Billings became, and remains, the economic capital of the northern plains.

Oil was discovered in the region around the time Billings was coming into its own as a city. By nineteen thirty-three, there were already three separate refineries operating in the area. The current major refinery site was established in nineteen forty-seven, when land along the Yellowstone was purchased for about sixty-one thousand dollars, chosen specifically for its access to water, transportation corridors, and pipeline infrastructure.

The refineries process crude oil piped from fields in Montana, Wyoming, and Canada. ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and other operators have all had major facilities here. The refineries produce gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and the other petroleum products that supply the enormous hinterland Billings serves, a trade area that the Chamber of Commerce puts at more than one hundred twenty-five thousand square miles.

This is not a romantic part of the Billings story, but it is an honest one. The oil economy helped fund hospitals, universities, and civic institutions. It also tied the city's fortunes to commodity prices and, more recently, to questions about the long-term future of fossil fuel infrastructure in a changing energy landscape. The refineries on the Yellowstone are Billings working through that question in real time.