CVR Energy Nitrogen Fertilizer Operations

CVR Energy’s nitrogen fertilizer business includes a unique petroleum coke gasification facility, Coffeyville Resources Nitrogen Fertilizers, which is located adjacent to our oil refinery in Coffeyville, Kan. The 20-acre nitrogen fertilizer plant is the only commercial facility in North America that uses low cost petroleum coke—as opposed to costly natural gas—to produce nitrogen fertilizers. At current natural gas prices, our nitrogen fertilizer business is also the lowest cost producer of ammonia and urea ammonium nitrate (UAN) in North America.

The majority of the petroleum coke used in the state-of-the-art gasification process is supplied by our refinery. The technology we use to produce ammonia and UAN is complex. The gasifier converts low priced petroleum coke into a hydrogen rich synthesis gas. The syngas is then converted into anhydrous ammonia in an ultra high efficiency ammonia plant licensed from Ammonia Casale. Subsequently, the ammonia is further upgraded into UAN in a fully integrated plant licensed from Weatherly, which is the largest single train UAN plant in America.

The plant's unique process uses less than one percent of the natural gas utilized by other nitrogen-based fertilizer facilities that are heavily dependent upon this high cost feedstock. As a result, our facility is not subject to the kind of periodic economic closures that often occur at domestic, natural gas-based ammonia plants during periods of high natural gas prices.

In 2007, Coffeyville Resources Nitrogen Fertilizers produced 326,662 short tons of anhydrous ammonia, approximately two-thirds of which was upgraded to 576,888 short tons of UAN.