Bill Bush | 202.682.8114 | bushw@api.org

WASHINGTON, April 13, 2011 – Today API awarded its 2010 Distinguished Award for Outstanding Safety and Environmental Performance to Koch Pipeline Company, L.P.  This is API’s highest safety and environmental performance award for pipeline operators.  Harry Pefanis, President and COO of Plains All American Pipeline and Chair of API’s Pipeline Subcommittee, presented the award to Bob O’Hair, Executive Vice President of Operations and Compliance Excellence for Koch Pipeline Company, L.P. at API’s 62nd annual Pipeline Conference in San Antonio, Texas.

Koch Pipeline won the Distinguished Award in the large operator category.  No small operator won the Distinguished Award this year. 

Koch Pipeline is based in Wichita, Kansas, and operates about 4,000 miles of crude oil, refined petroleum products, chemicals and natural gas liquids pipelines in Texas, Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri and Wisconsin.  The company won the Distinguished Award for its excellent record of safety performance, achieving OSHA VPP Star status for its entire Southern Operations Group, funding research to improve accuracy of In-Line Inspection testing, having outstanding environmental performance, and winning this year’s API Environmental Award for large operators with the best combined record of spills/volume released per pipeline mile.  

ExxonMobil Pipeline won the Occupational Safety Performance Award for large operators, for the third year in a row.  In the small operator category, three companies shared that honor, including CITGO Pipeline Company (for the second year in a row), Portland Pipe Line Corporation, and TransMontaigne Product Services Inc., all reporting no OSHA recordable incidents for employees and contractors.

The Environmental Performance Award in the small operator category, with each recipient reporting no releases, went to Equistar Chemicals, LP – Equistar Pipelines and Genesis Energy, Inc. 

API represents more than 470 oil and natural gas companies, leaders of a technology-driven industry that supplies most of America’s energy, supports more than 9.2 million U.S. jobs and 7.5 percent of the U.S. economy, and, since 2000, has invested nearly $2 trillion in U.S. capital projects to advance all forms of energy, including alternatives.