Water Quality

The El Segundo Refinery is the only refinery in the Los Angeles Basin that receives the majority of its crude supply via ocean tankers. Crude oil is off-loaded into underwater pipelines at our offshore Marine Terminal located several miles offshore, ensuring no impact to residents or the coastline. This terminal is one of the safest, most efficient in operation, and can handle two tankers at once in order to ensure that the crude is transferred from ship to shore without spilling even a drop into the water.

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The success of our oil spill prevention efforts is demonstrated in the very low incident record at the El Segundo Refinery Marine Terminal. Even so, since 1971, the Refinery has maintained an Oil Spill Response Team comprised of more than 60 volunteer employees. These employees, from all areas and job functions in the Refinery, train to keep up all equipment, operate boom boats at sea, clean up beaches in the event that oil should come ashore, and tend to any affected wildlife.

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The team coordinates closely with agencies such as the Coast Guard and actively participates on the boards of oil spill response co-ops. Oil response training is continuous, with practice drills of our fine-tuned crisis response plan throughout the year. We also have deployment drills during the year for our ships in the bay.

We have been very successful in cleaning the groundwater beneath the El Segundo Refinery. Our extensive number of recovery wells has virtually eliminated hydrocarbon vapors in El Segundo and Manhattan Beach. To protect the groundwater, the majority of tanks in the Refinery that hold petroleum products have been fitted with double bottoms and leak detection systems. Chevron was the first in the U.S. to adopt a standard for double bottoms on our tanks. In addition, we developed the technology for secondary containment with leak detection.

We have over 1,000 miles of pipe in this facility, most of which used to be buried. Using what we call the "daylighting" process, the pipes have been moved above ground so, in case of a leak, it can be more easily detected. The "sleeving" process, where one pipe is inserted into another pipe, is an additional method we use in order to catch and prevent any leaks.

Chevron's El Segundo Refinery Subsurface Recovery Project was initiated to remove subsurface hydrocarbon vapors from beneath portions of El Segundo and El Porto adjacent to the Refinery. The vapor recovery systems consist of networks of approximately 50 extraction wells located in El Porto, 26 wells in El Segundo, 20 wells in the NRG El Segundo Power plant, and a string of 20 wells along the bike path north of NRG. These networks act like giant subsurface vacuums that collect hydrocarbon vapors and route them to incinerators in the Refinery where they are consumed. Collectively, the systems removed an estimated 500 gallons (liquid equivalent) of hydrocarbons during the early days of operation and have successfully reduced the vapor levels to nearly zero. Today, these systems are operated to ensure the continued safety of the residents of Manhattan Beach and El Segundo. About 20 wells throughout the two cities are monitored regularly to verify that conditions are safe and stable.

The El Segundo Refinery is the only industrial facility in the L.A. Basin to operate its own wastewater treatment facility. All of the stormwater runoff and industrial wastewater is treated on site before it is released. We feel that, as experts at testing and treating, we have more control over the quality of the process and less safety risk because the waste is not being transferred to a third party. Moreover, we monitor the process minute by minute and some of the treatment requirements we must meet in order to comply with our National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit are more stringent than the requirements for drinking water. Of the three direct dischargers to the Santa Monica Bay, the other two being municipal sewage plants, our facility accounts for less than one-half percent of the material discharged into the bay.