CITGO Plant Earns Top Honors from Nissan

    TULSA, Okla., Feb. 22 For the second straight year, Nissan
Motor Company has recognized CITGO Petroleum Corporation's Cicero Lubricants
Manufacturing Plant with the 2000 Nissan Quality Master Award.  The award
recognizes CITGO as one of Nissan's highest-quality suppliers.
    The Nissan Quality Master Award recognizes companies that maintain high
levels of excellence and consistently deliver scores of 85 or higher in
Nissan's overall quality evaluation system.  Nissan's yearlong evaluation
process examines a supplier's incoming quality, response time, cost
reductions, capability, design support, shipment turnaround, product
performance and complexity and warranties.
    CITGO's Cicero plant manufactures PSF-2 for Nissan, a specially
engineered, original-fill power steering fluid.  The plant -- which celebrated
its 50th anniversary in 2000 -- produces, packages and ships more than
50 million gallons of finished product annually.  Additionally, the plant can
manufacture up to 10 million pounds of grease each year, a number that will
double in 2001 as new process vessels and storage tanks are added.  All of
this is done with a labor and management team of 75 people.
    The largest producer of two-cycle engine oils in the United States, the
Cicero plant has the storage capacity for more than one million gallons of
packaged lubricant products.  The facility currently has 103 storage tanks
located in four tank farms.  In 1996, it received certification to the ISO
9002 international quality standard.
    According to Marvin Kerkstra, plant manager for CITGO's Cicero facility,
"We're delighted and honored to be recognized in this way by Nissan, it speaks
volumes for the high level of confidence and trust they place in CITGO.  The
award not only recognizes the overall quality of PSF-2 power steering fluid,
it honors the men and women who make sure it is always available to Nissan
where and when they need it."
    CITGO, based in Tulsa, Okla., is a refiner, transporter and marketer of
transportation fuels, lubricants, petrochemicals, refined waxes, asphalt and
other industrial products.  The company is owned by PDV America, Inc., an
indirect wholly owned subsidiary of Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A., the national
oil company of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

    For more information on CITGO, see the company's website at
http://www.citgo.com .