I'd like to use this mod, but not BuildCraft. Would you accept a PR that removed the dependency and made this into a standalone mod?

Yeah...

Looks like if you want Buildcraft like tanks without Buildcraft your best bet is Charset Tanks

Have you looked into what it would take to do that? I would serious consider it if it didn't remove any of the features that currently exist.

I haven't looked into it yet (didn't want to waste the effort in case your answer was just "no", but I will now).

Oh wow. You're basically using all of BuildCraft's tank code for everything.