CORPUS CHRISTI FACILITY EARNS NPRAS HIGHEST SAFETY AWARD

Award recognizes plants that meet stringent guidelines and have achieved outstanding performance.

NEW ORLEANS -- Flint Hills Resources, LPs Corpus Christi refining complex today received the National Petrochemical & Refiners Association Distinguished Safety Award, one of the industrys highest safety commendations. Only two facilities nationwide earned the award, which recognizes plants that meet stringent guidelines and have achieved outstanding safety performance.

Winners were recognized at the NPRA Annual Safety Awards Banquet during the associations National Environmental & Safety Conference. The Corpus Christi facility also earned the Gold Award for reducing its total OSHA recordable incident rate by more than 25 percent as compared to the average for the previous three years, and the Meritorious Achievement award for achieving an OSHA recordable incident rate below 1.5. Flint Hills Minnesota refinery also earned Gold and Meritorious Achievement awards for 2002 safety performance.

NPRA has a long history of recognizing refiners that display a superior level of safety performance," said Bob Slaughter, NPRA president. Flint Hills Corpus Christi facilitys commitment to safety is clear -- the facility and its employees have earned safety recognition from the association for 10 consecutive years."

Employees at the Corpus Christi refining complex completed 2002 with only three Occupational Safety and Health Administration recordable incidents, for a 0.28 rate, which was the lowest in plant history. This incident rate is 96 percent lower than the 8.1 average for all U.S. manufacturing facilities and its 80 percent lower (or five times better) than the 1.4 average rate for U.S. refiners, according to 2001 OSHA data. The facilitys employees have also gone more than two years -- working more than 4.9 million hours and processing more than 211 million barrels (nearly 9 billion gallons) of crude oil -- without a lost-time incident.

These accomplishments place Flint Hills Resources among the nations safest refining operators, according to National Petrochemical & Refiners Association statistics.

We are honored to have our safety performance recognized by the industry," said Joe Coco, Flint Hills Resources vice president and manager of the Corpus Christi facility. An injury-free workplace is a top priority for us. Our employees daily demonstrate their commitment to maintaining the highest safety standards. With a facility as large and complex as we have, achieving this takes employee commitment and involvement, and well continue to exhibit those as we try to keep this record going."

Flint Hills safety record reflects employees active participation in programs to promote on-the-job safety. The Corpus Christi refining facility has earned Star Status" in the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administrations Voluntary Protection Program -- a designation earned by only the top 11 percent of refining facilities for workplace safety.

NPRAs Distinguished Safety Award is part of its program to promote accident prevention and to publicly recognize the petroleum refining and petrochemical manufacturing industrys excellent safety record. Recipients must pass a comprehensive review of individual safety performance programs, achieve both an employee and contractor total recordable incident rate of 1.0 or less, and have no lost-time incidents for the evaluation period.

Flint Hills Resources, LP, based in Wichita, Kan., is a leading producer of fuels and other petrochemical products. The company operates refineries in Corpus Christi, Texas and Pine Bend, Minn., which process about 600,000 barrels of crude oil daily. Employees at both of Flint Hills Resources refining facilities, in Texas and Minnesota, achieved a zero lost-time incident rate in 2001 and 2002. The companys employees in Pine Bend, Minn., exceeded two years with no lost-time incidents in November and have gone nearly 4 million work-hours without a significant injury. More information is available at www.fhr.com.

OSHA recordable incident rates are standard industrial safety performance measures that represent health and safety incidents per 200,000 work-hours, a unit of measure chosen by the agency because it approximates the annual work of 100 employees. Lost-time incidents are those injuries or occupational illnesses that result in time away from work.

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