PRESS RELEASE: Top 50 Private Companies Award

contact:		Glen Gonzalez, Executive Vice President, 212/223-6515
subject:		AGE Named #15 of Top 50 Private Companies in San Antonio
who:		San Antonio Business Journal
where:		San Antonio, TX
when:		January 30, 2004
email:		ggonzalez@agerefining.com

Welcome to "San Antonio's Top 50 Private Companies," a special supplement to the Business Journal produced in cooperation with the local office of Carneiro, Chumney & Co. LC, a leading accounting firm.

The Business Journal and Carneiro, Chumney are being joined in the ninth year of this annual supplement by co-sponsors Humana and JPMorgan Chase in recognizing and honoring the contributions that local privately held companies have made to our economy.

Each company that made this year's Top 50 will receive a commemorative award and extra copies of this supplement at an upcoming award breakfast.

The Top 50 companies have been chosen by Carneiro, Chumney based on revenue figures supplied on the questionnaire by responding firms. Revenue figures reported by the companies were for their most recent fiscal year ending between October 2002 and September 2003. To maintain confidentiality, each company's revenue figure is listed in this supplement within a range.

Qualifying firms had to be based in the San Antonio area, with at least 50 percent of ownership or control located here. The also had to be engaged in on of the eligible industries, which included communications, construction, distribution, entertainment, hotel/restaurants, manufacturing, oil and gas, real estate, transportation and wholesale/retail.

Some privately held local companies which do not appear may have been large enough to make our listing, but did not provide revenue figures needed for ranking or did not meet other established qualifications.

Some of San Antonio's more well-known companies that did not return questionnaires are listed separately and are featured with information obtained by Hoover's Online information service.

We offer a special congratulations to all companies making this year's Top 50. Your achievements are helping our economy grow even stronger.

#15. AGE Refining, Inc.
1131 E. Commerce, 2nd Floor
San Antonio, TX 78205
(210) 223-6515; www.agerefining.com

Chairman & CEO: Al Gonzalez
Chief Financial officer: Anne Renfroe
Year established: 1991
Total full-time employees in San Antonio: 54

DESCRIPTION OF BUSINESS

AGE Refining manufactures refines and markets jet fuels, diesel products, solvents and other highly specialized fuels. AGE holds the contract to supply diesel fuel to VIA Metropolitan Transit.

The company's clients cover a variety of sectors, including commercial, local municipalities and the federal government.

The family-run company today has more than 125 clients in San Antonio, Dallas, Houston, South Texas, California, and Washington, D.C.

Founder Al Gonzalez was born in Corpus Christi and held a number of part-time jobs in refineries around South Texas in his growing-up years. He worked with Coastal States Gas Producing Co. in Corpus Christi in the personnel division after earning a management degree from Texas A&I University in Kingsville.

He later moved to Dallas and worked for Texas Instruments in its human resources group. He later started a general contracting firm, then chose to diversify to protect against the ups and downs in the Dallas real estate market in the 1970s. He set up Gulf-Tex Resources, a crude trading entity that ultimately supplied oil to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

With the Texas economy in uncertain shape in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Gonzalez began to look for new entrepreneurial opportunities. He formed Al Gonzalez Energy (AGE) Marketing Co. and purchased the Howell Hydrocarbons Refinery in San Antonio in January 1191. Through a series of investments, this company would become AGE Refining, Inc.