Significant areas for Chevron's refining and marketing operations are the west coast of North America, the U.S. Gulf Coast extending into Latin America, Southeast Asia, South Korea, southern Africa and the United Kingdom. To enhance our competitive position, we are upgrading our refineries to manufacture transportation fuels from a wide variety of crude oils. We also are making investments to improve product yields, reliability, efficiency and environmental performance. Our El Segundo, California, refinery is undergoing a multiphase upgrade that will improve reliability and create more high-value products from cheaper feedstocks. The upgrade is expected to be completed in 2012. Our Pascagoula, Mississippi, refinery is installing a state-of-the-art continuous catalytic reformer, which is expected to improve reliability and increase gasoline production by approximately 10 percent when installation is completed in 2010. Our Yeosu, South Korea, affiliate refinery also expects to complete the first phase of a second upgrade project in 2010. The upgrade will enable it to process even greater volumes of low-cost, high-sulfur crude oils than it currently processes.
We continue to focus our marketing efforts on areas where we have a strong competitive position. In 2009, we completed 14 market exits, selling assets primarily in Africa and Latin America. We also announced plans to withdraw the Chevron and Texaco motor fuel brands in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States and other Eastern states. These are areas that are costly to supply and where our brands have a relatively small presence. We plan to continue our portfolio optimization efforts, which are expected to result in a market presence in fewer than 40 countries over the next few years while retaining scale and materiality.
Posted: April 2010