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American Bottom Conservancy, represented by the Natural Resources Defense Council, and Sierra Club, represented by the Environmental Integrity Project, today filed a Petition for Review of the air permit issued by Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA) to ConocoPhillips to expand its Wood River, Illinois, refinery in order to process heavy crude oil derived from Canadian tar sands. The massive refinery expansion signals an alarming trend in the U.S. away from conventional crude oil to the use of cheaper and dirtier tar sands, resulting in triple the global-warming gases and increases in regional air pollutants such as carbon monoxide, volatile organic materials, and sulfur oxides. The groups brought their challenge in front the Environmental Appeal Board because of IEPA's failure to require state-of-the-art pollution control measures and because of IEPA's failure to follow procedural rules designed to protect citizens.