Anonymous
My how times have changed. In 99 my refinery (NCRA) and Coffeyville were merged in a shotgun wedding. Our parent cooperatives were thought to be merging and they decided to merge their refining interests early. When the merger of CHS and Farmland fell through we were in a fix. We could not not make enough money to make up for how much they were losing. In 2001 we split up and went our seperate ways. At the time we were told that Coffeyville would in all likelyhood be down in a year or less. Farmland was in Bankruptcy and they literally could not give the place away. I distinctly remember a plant wide meeting in which our plant mamager was asked if we would be taking over Coffeyville and running it. His response was ” even if we could get it for free, we still don’t want it. The cost to upgrade and remain compliant was far beyond our ability to meet”. I’m sure those words have haunted him every since, but back then nobody could foresee the outrageous margins we are enjoying today or that they could make ammonia based fertilizer from coke for far less than anybody else could.