Chevron's global refining system manufactures fuels and other products sold by Chevron's marketing, lubricants, and supply and trading organizations. We market these products under three brands – Chevron, Texaco and Caltex.
Chevron's wholly owned and affiliated fuel refineries and an asphalt refinery can process more than 2 million barrels of crude oil per day.
Seven refineries make up more than 75 percent of the company's total fuel refining capacity. Five of these core refineries – in Singapore, Thailand, South Korea, and Richmond and El Segundo, California – manufacture products for countries in the Pacific Basin. The other two refineries, in Pascagoula, Mississippi, and Pembroke, United Kingdom, supply countries primarily in the Atlantic basin. Many of these refineries are capable of processing heavy, challenged crude oils and producing a variety of high-value products such as transportation fuels.
Safety and reliability remain top Chevron priorities. We work hard to systematically eliminate the root causes of refinery incidents. Our experts help us enhance equipment and maintaining a reliable refinery infrastructure.
Several of our refineries recently have undergone major upgrades.
The El Segundo refinery was upgraded in 2007. The Southern California plant can process heavier, higher-sulfur, less expensive crude oils than was previously possible. Our Pembroke refinery has been modified to enable greater use of crude oils from our partners in the Caspian region.
In 2007, Chevron's 50 percent-owned GS Caltex affiliate completed a major upgrade of its refinery in Yeosu, South Korea. Plant improvements are expected to increase production of high-value products by 33,000 barrels per day, to add 15,000 barrels per day in new lubricants production and to reduce costs through the processing of cheaper, heavier crude oils.
Chevron also began construction of a new continuous catalytic reformer unit at the Pascagoula, Mississippi, refinery. This upgrade is expected to increase gasoline production by 10 percent, or about 600,000 gallons per day, by mid-2010.
Chevron has a 5 percent interest in Reliance Petroleum Limited, a company formed by Reliance Industries Limited to own and operate a new 580,000-barrel-per-day export refinery in Jamnagar, India. The refinery is expected to be operational by the end of 2008. Chevron has the opportunity to increase its ownership share to 29 percent.
In 2007, our configuration of refineries enabled Chevron to take advantage of the significant price difference between the light, sweet crude oils that were in shorter supply and the less costly, heavy, sour crudes that were more plentiful worldwide.
Updated: March 2008