Flint Hills Resources is the largest oil refinery in Alaska with a capacity of 220,000 barrels a day. the North Pole facility receives crude oil from the North Slope and processes it into gasoline, naptha, jet fuel, heating oil, diesel, gasoil and asphalt for Alaskan as well as international customers. Product is off-loaded in Anchorage: jet fuel for our domestic and international air carrier customers at the Anchorage International Airport; and other products are distributed by truck to the Anchorage areas as well. Various products are also shipped via barges to the Far East and coastal Alaska destinations. Once emptied, the rail cars are shipped back to the refinery in North Pole. The refinery started producing product in August 1977.

Here are some other informational tidbits and statistics:

• Flint Hills Resources is headquartered out of Wichita, Kansas
• They split the empties into two consists
• The railroad backs the tank cars in and disconnects them at the fence perimeter. Flint Hills Refinery trackmobiles move them to the loading area and back.
• There are loading four tracks
• They simultaneously load 6 tank cars every 35 minutes
• Full cars are put on track four
• 80% of all tank car traffic is for the Anchorage International airport
• Every two tank cars fuels a 747
• The Anchorage airport is the fourth largest handler of air freight in the world
• Temperatures below minus 30 degrees can cause problems for both the product and the equipment that handles it. The cure for this is good preventative maintenance.
• The company has a lot of great employees and it is a great place to work
   
   

Refinery	Rail car entrance gate	Rail car loading track diagram
Loading racks	Loading racks	Loading nozzle
Trackmobile used to rail cars	Trackmobile used to rail cars