Valero 2014 Annual Report Download - page 6

4Valero Energy Corporation
ready access to export markets, which enables
us to operate at higher utilization rates.
In addition to solid nancial performance, the
Valero team had many accomplishments that I
am pleased to share with you.
Operations
yOur safety results were excellent, as we
recorded our lowest-ever employee injury
rate, and our combined rate for employees
and contractors also was an all-time low, and
less than half the industry average.
yWe continued to lead with the most reneries
approved as VPP “Star Sites,” the highest
safety designation by the U.S. Occupational
Safety and Health Administration and
aliated state agencies. We voluntarily
submit to rigorous safety audits under the
program, which has approved eight of
Valero’s U.S. reneries as Star Sites, as well
as two asphalt terminals.
yWe continued to achieve top-tier renery
operating performance, which enabled our
high renery utilization rate of 96 percent in
2014. We also continued to reduce our rate
of disruptive process safety events.
yWe continued to reduce total air emissions
resulting from startup, shutdown and
malfunction events. We earned awards in
2014 for our process of recovering usable oil
from waste materials and reprocessing it into
high-value fuel.
yOur Valero Renewables ethanol plants
maintained the highest production capacity
in the industry of their type, allowing us to
add equivalent capacity of 1.6 plants with
essentially no capital increase. Also, our
Diamond Green Diesel joint venture bio-
renery is running well above its nameplate
capacity.
Fellow Shareholders,
On behalf of our Valero team, thank you for
the support and trust you have provided to
us. You will recall that in 2014, we completed
a leadership transition that was well-planned
and smoothly executed by our Board of
Directors. As our results demonstrated, our
team continued to perform very well through the
transition.
Our strategy continues to target excellence
in operations as a top priority. Our team
understands that reliability drives safe and
protable operations. Our priorities also include
returning cash to shareholders, maintaining
discipline in our capital investments and
unlocking implicit values in our portfolio of
assets.
We are proud of our solid nancial results for
2014, with reported operating income of more
than $5.9 billion and net income of $3.6 billion,
or $6.85 per share – our best performance
since 2007. Our reneries and ethanol plants
ran extremely well, which enabled us to capture
higher rening margins and post strong earnings
for 2014. We also continued to optimize our
supply, distribution and marketing activities.
The increase in production of North American
crude oil and natural gas continues to provide a
competitive advantage for our reneries located
in the U.S. Gulf Coast, the Mid-Continent and
Canada. Additionally, our Gulf Coast plants have
A Letter to Our Shareholders
Our strategy continues to target
excellence in operations as a top
priority. Our team understands
that reliability drives safe and
protable operations.