For a business that's been around for nearly four decades, our LNG team is showing that it can still wow the marketplace.

The latest evidence is the 2006 Excellence in Energy Awards, sponsored by Pipeline magazine. Air Products received the award for "Best Company in Industry Technology" at an awards ceremony in Abu Dhabi in December. The honor recognizes the contribution to the energy industry of Air Products' technologies for the production of LNG (liquefied natural gas).

Most interesting about that is that the award recognizes both our traditional LNG technology as well as our most recent technical achievements.

The C3-MR process, which is a mainstay in LNG production, was first introduced in 1972. Over the past few years, several new projects using the C3-MR process have been built, and with the introduction of Air Products Split-MR™ machinery configuration, plant capacities of up to 5 million tons per day of LNG have been achieved. Our new, patented AP-X™ process, on the other hand, is our most recent process improvement. It is being installed at six production trains in Qatar and allows our engineers to design plants with a capacity 50 percent larger than any LNG production plant in operation today.

The industry is telling us that we have provided, and continue to provide, technology and processes worthy of recognition.

"What's particularly gratifying about this award," says Jim Solomon of our LNG business unit in Allentown, "is that the nominations are made by our customers and voting is done by the readers of Pipeline magazine. That shows how highly regarded we are by the people in the industry. This achievement will certainly earn us even more recognition for the business.

"And the fact that we are being honored for both our long-successful technology and our latest one is really rewarding. We take great pride in this award."

No company has more experience in the supply of natural gas liquefaction processes and equipment than Air Products. We helped pioneer the LNG industry and have been designing liquefaction systems and supplying main cryogenic heat exchangers for plants all over the world for nearly 40 years. Air Products' liquefaction process technology and equipment is well proven and is used in the vast majority of the world's baseload LNG capacity.

We are currently executing a number of LNG projects for clients in Yemen, Peru, Indonesia, Nigeria and Qatar.