Power Generation and Natural Gas
With its growth in the electric power and natural gas utility sectors, GS Caltex is becoming a bigger energy provider. In 2010, the company's annual gas sales totaled about 600,000 tons, primarily through GS Caltex subsidiaries Seorabeol City Gas and Haeyang City Gas, to more than 600,000 households. GS Caltex's electric power subsidiary GS Power Co. Ltd. provides power and heating to about 300,000 customers.
Refining
Chevron's largest refinery is the GS Caltex complex in Yeosu. The facility is the world's fourth-largest, processing 840,000 barrels per day of crude and condensate. The company's share of the refinery's capacity is 420,000 barrels per day.
In the third quarter of 2010, the company improved the refinery's flexibility, reliability and capability to process lower-cost crude oil, completing the first stage of a $3 billion project. Production reached full capacity at the new 60,000-barrel-per-day heavy oil residuum hydrocracker. The unit is designed to lower feedstock costs and increase product yield. The company announced plans to build a 53,000-barrel-per-day heavy oil fluid catalytic cracking unit at the refinery. It is the refinery's fourth unit of its kind and is scheduled to be finished in 2013.
GS Caltex's $1.5 billion heavy oil upgrade project, which included the world's largest vacuum distillation unit, began production in 2007. The hydrocracker and base oil plant greatly extended the Yeosu refinery's complexity and ability to produce transportation fuels and lubricants that meet national and regional clean-fuel regulations, such as ultra-low-sulfur diesel fuels.
Chemicals
GS Caltex is one of the world's leading manufacturers of petrochemicals, especially aromatics.
GS Caltex's petrochemical production capacity stands at:
- 2.8 million tons of aromatics, including benzene, toluene and xylene. These are base chemicals used to produce a range of products, including adhesives, plastics and textile fibers.
- 180,000 tons of polypropylene, which is used to make food packaging, laboratory equipment, textiles and more.
Our Chevron Oronite subsidiary supplies fuel and lubricant additives to Korean companies.
Chevron is involved in a chemical facility in South Korea through our joint venture Chevron Phillips Chemical Co LLC and its affiliates (CPChem).
CPChem has a 60 percent interest in K.R. Polymers Company, Ltd., a joint venture that produces K-Resin® SBC. This styrene-butadiene copolymer, characterized by its clarity and shatter resistance, is used in medical devices, toys and hangers, among other things.
Marketing and Retail
GS Caltex has maintained its strong position with South Korean motorists for more than 40 years.
The joint venture operates nearly 3,900 service and filling stations, earning about a 27 percent share of the nation's fuel business.
GS Caltex pioneered the convenience retail business in Korea. In the mid-1990s, it launched JoyMart™, a convenience store chain, and AutoOasis™, a network of automobile maintenance facilities, both the first of their kind in the nation.
Updated: May 2011
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