Farmland Continues Round-The-Clock Cleanup Effort On Verdigris River.

COFFEYVILLE, Kan.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 18, 1998--Farmland today pledged to be relentless in its efforts to contain and clean up the oil spill on the Verdigris River. In addition, Farmland arranged Wednesday to provide water, if necessary, to the communities whose water supplies have been interrupted.

"We are going to do the right thing to minimize the impact of this accident on the environment and the communities along the Verdigris River," said Coleman Ferguson, Farmland's General Manager of Refining.

Working with local, state and federal authorities - including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality and the Army Corps of Engineers - Farmland emergency response crews are aggressively working around-the-clock to capture the oil that leaked into the Verdigris River. The cleanup effort is focused at the point where U.S. Highway 60 crosses the river, 13 miles south of the point where the leak occurred. Containment booms spanning the river are trapping a majority of the oil, which is then vacuumed off the river into tanker trucks. Additional booms placed three miles downstream are capturing most of the remaining oil.

However, late Wednesday, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol told Farmland that they observed a small amount of oil downstream from the last boom. Farmland is deploying five specially designed "skimmers" onto the river and Oologah Lake to remove any oil that might make it that far.

Farmland officials were notified at approximately 8:40 p.m. Tuesday by the Montgomery County, Kan., Sheriff's Department that an odor had been detected near the river, indicating a possible problem. Farmland emergency response personnel immediately located the leak in a pipeline one mile north of the U.S. Highway 169 bridge. The pipeline was quickly shut off, stopping the leak, and an earthen containment berm was built, stopping the release to the river. Farmland officials estimate that approximately 800 barrels (about 32,000 gal.) of light crude oil escaped into the river before the leak was discovered and the pipeline shut down.

The initial investigation discovered a crack in the pipeline approximately 250 feet from the river. Farmland officials have not yet determined what caused the pipeline to crack, but will conduct a full investigation as soon as possible. Regular checks performed at 5:00 p.m. that night did not indicate any problems with the pipeline.

Farmland Industries, Inc., Kansas City, Missouri, is the largest farmer-owned cooperative in North America, with 1,500 local cooperative members owned by nearly 600,000 farmers.