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Overview

In 1912, the Standard Oil Company of Calfiornia opened its second large refinery in the state, in El Segundo, CA, a coastal location about 19 miles southwest of Downtown Los Angeles. Standard of Calfiornia's first refinery opened in the Northern CA town of Richmond in 1902.

Building History

This oil refinery complex has been operating in El Segundo, CA, since 1912. Six years earlier, US Department of Justice lawyers began legal proceedings against the Standard Trust, guided by the Sherman Anti-trust Act of 1890, legislation designed to break up monopolies and to encourage fair competition. Four-and-a-half years later, a Supreme Court decision of 05/1911 decided in favor of the government, and decreed that the New York-based Standard Oil Company of New Jersey and its affiliates had to be broken up into smaller, competing entities.

Between 1900 and 1906, the Standard Oil monopoly's California affiliate, Iowa Standard, purchased the Pacific Coast Oil Company, founded in 1879 in San Francisco. By 1906, the year break-up litigation began, the combined company rebranded itself as the "Standard Oil Company of California."

The year the legal break-up concluded, 1911, the Standard Oil Company of California became very active. It created the California Natural Gas Company to manage its search for natural gas in the San Joaquin Valley. It also completed its second large CA refinery in El Segundo. The first, on 500 acres in Richmond, CA, had opened in 1902. By the end of 1911, Standard of CA had built two long pipelines connecting the Richmond plant with oil fields in Kern County about 250 miles away. The El Segundo and Richmond plants gave the company enormous refining capacity in both Northern and Southern CA.

The Standard Oil Company of California (Socal) managed the El Segundo plant from 1912 until 1977. Since 1931, a chevron had appeared on the labels of some company products, and this design device became increasingly important for company branding purposes over the years. In 1984-1985, the company merged with the Gulf Oil Company and officially renamed itself the "Chevron Corporation." Chevron managed the El Segundo refinery until 2001.

In 10/2001, Chevron merged with Texaco and Caltex forming another, larger conglomerate, "ChevronTexaco," which ran this facility until 2005. At this time, Chevron Texaco swallowed up the Union Oil Company of California (later known as the Unocal Corporation), requiring another renaming process. It was decided that the name Chevron was the simplest for consumers to remember, so the company became known as "Chevron Corporation." This entity has run this facility since 2005.

In 2011, the El Segundo refinery had its 100th anniversary of operation.

Building Notes

In 2021, this refinery had a capacity of 269,000 barrels of oil per day.

PCAD id: 1142