1 Air Liquide America

2 Modes of Supply

3 Typical Air Separation Unit

4 Cryogenic Argon Purification Argon is typically co-produced with large O2 requirements  Particularly Steel & Chemical plants Argon represents 1% of air  And requires refining to achieve purity levels >99.9% Crude Argon O 2 < 5 ppm N 2 < 0.5% LAR to Storage Industrial Grade O 2 < 5 ppm N 2 < 20 ppm

5 Air Liquide America Argon Plants The most comprehensive productions capability in North America

6 Distribution Argon can be delivered by truck and rail  20 to 25 Ton cryogenic trailers  60 to 100 Ton cryogenic rail cars Air Liquide has the best capability to deliver the greatest amount of LAR anywhere in North America

7 Supply & Demand ALA is the 2 nd largest in the US  Includes MG acquisition After divestments  Excluding Canadian capacity Argon demand has grown faster than Industrial Production  5%/yr in the 80’s  Over 4%/yr in the 90’s Demand is forecasted to increase over 3%/yr through 2006

8 Argon Markets Argon is forecasted to grow 3%/year through 2006  Metals & Heat treat and welding driven by quality  New applications Opto-electronics (optical fiber, LED) Food & Wine Inerting Battery and Solar Panel manufacture

9 Availability Typically argon effective capacity is 90% of nameplate  Due to higher downtime Longer time to purity after start-ups  Production variation due to O2 demand When O2 demand is down, argon production is lost  Long supply chains Capacity on the Gulf and Northeast is railed long distances Effective capacity utilization (demand/effective capacity) is estimated to be in the high 80%’s By 2006, utilization will be in the high 90%’s In summary, availability will be tight  However, Air Liquide has the ability to bring on additional capacity This will be a function of argon price