MAKOTI (AP) - Three Affiliated Tribes Chairman Tex Hall says plans for an oil refinery near here are being held up by federal reviews.

Hall said the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Environmental Protection Agency's Region 8 office in Denver and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are working on the reviews for an environmental impact statement. Tribal officials are not questioning the need for one, but they believe the process is taking too long, he said.

"We are really concerned that this is taking longer than it need be," Hall said. "They're saying that there has never been one built for 30 years. They must have to dust off this process."

Tribal Treasurer Frank Whitecalfe said the latest word from the EPA is that the environmental impact statement will be completed in February 2007. Hall said the tribe was told earlier that it would be finished in December this year; then that date was moved back to December 2006.

"We'd really like to bring it up to September or October of 2006," Whitecalfe said. "If we get it to that point, we're comfortable that things will work. But if we start talking another year …"

He said the tribes started working with the EPA on the required environmental review in 2002. Delays add to the cost of building the refinery, he said.

That cost now is estimated at about $150 million, compared to the original estimate of about $100 million.

Carol Campbell, a deputy assistant regional administrator for EPA's regional office in Denver, said the agency is doing everything possible to expedite the project. One problem has been incomplete information from tribal contractors, she said.

After the preliminary environmental impact statement is completed, the agency will issue a draft, to be followed by a public comment period before the final statement.

"Everything has timeframes with it and they're standardized," Campbell said. "There's not a whole lot we can do to cut it and we don't want to. You don't want to cut the public process."

She said the final environmental impact statement is scheduled to be published in the Federal Register in September 2006, and construction could start in February 2007.

The proposed Clean Fuels Petroleum Refinery on the Fort Berthold Reservation may be the first refinery owned by an Indian tribe and built on an Indian reservation. The EPA is reviewing another refinery project in Yuma, Ariz., but it is not located on tribal land, Campbell said.

The Makoti refinery is being planned as a 15,000-barrel-a-day plant and could be expanded up to 30,000 barrels a day, Whitecalfe said.

Once operational, it would provide in the neighborhood of 70 jobs, Whitecalfe said.

The Three Affiliated Tribes have 469 acres in the Makoti area, some of which will be used for the refinery and some for a buffalo project.

"We're really concerned about the rising fuel costs, like everybody in the country," Hall said. "The president and Congress are all focused on building more refineries."

Whitecalfe and Hall said a groundwater study is being conducted at the proposed refinery site A group called the Environmental Awareness Committee of Fort Berthold has raised questions about air and water quality.

"To me, the public does not need to be concerned about the federal agencies doing their job - they're really grilling us on this with three different agencies' reviews," Hall said. "We're just concerned that with three agencies doing this, that takes three times as long getting the review done. We're looking to expedite that."