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Torrance Refinery
Recent Developments
2009-2010 Pegasus Awards [New!]
ExxonMobil Pegasus Awards – provides Torrance teachers with the opportunity to implement innovative, creative classroom projects to enhance student learning.
The 2009-2010 Pegasus applications (see under recent refinery information) are now online! We’re looking for pioneering, innovative, ground-breaking and original classroom proposals from Torrance teachers! To learn more, join Torrance Unified School District’s Resource Teacher, Margaret Esfahani, for a Pegasus Grant Writing Workshop
on August 28th, 2009 from 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. at the Education Materials Building (2336 Plaza del Amo).
2009 Torrance Refinery Maintenance
During the next few months, maintenance work will generate increased activity in the refinery. This brochure is intended to answer your questions regarding all our maintenance activities.
About the Torrance Refinery
Serving Customers in Southern California, Arizona and Nevada for over 70 years
The year was 1929. The city of Torrance had only been incorporated for nine years when an oil refinery sprouted from acres of bean fields.
Tracing its beginnings from a Scottish sea captain named John Barneson, the facility was built in response to the mariner's vision of fueling ships in the Los Angeles harbor with recently discovered crude oil from California's San Joaquin Valley. Pipelines soon followed and during the Great Depression the refinery, then known as the General Petroleum Corporation, processed up to 30,000 barrels of crude oil daily lending a much-needed boost to the local economy.
Today, the ExxonMobil Torrance Refinery processes more than five times this amount by using the most up-to-date technologies to produce the highest quality gasoline, aviation fuels and other materials to keep California and the West "on the move."
Harvesting California's Black Gold
The refinery's crude oil supply still comes primarily from the San Joaquin Valley. ExxonMobil's M-70 pipeline, one of the country's most advanced, carries some of the heaviest crude oil in the world from Central California to the refinery. More than 70 percent of each barrel is refined into high quality, specially formulated low emissions gasoline and sold in Southern California, Arizona and Nevada. Other products of the Torrance refining process include jet fuel, diesel fuel, liquefied petroleum gases (LPG), coke and sulfur.
Torrance Refinery at a Glance...
- Employs nearly 800 people
- Covers 750 acres
- Processes an average of 150,000 barrels of crude oil per day
- Produces 1.8 billion gallons of gasoline per year
- Produces nearly 10 percent of the gasoline sold in California
- Provides jet fuel to Los Angeles International Airport via pipeline
- Other products of the refining process include liquefied petroleum gases, diesel fuel, petroleum coke and sulfur
- Pays more than $13 million in taxes annually to the City of Torrance
- Pays more than $3 million in taxes annually to support area schools
- Contributes more than $3.5 million to the local economy by purchasing products and services from more than 3,300 local business
