Home Fires

Looking north from the Albany Bulb, you can see the hills of Richmond dotted with reddish brown oil tanks. These belong to the Chevron Richmond refinery, the third largest oil processing plant in California.

California schoolchildren all learn about the Gold Rush, but they don’t always learn about California’s oil boom. California grew up on petroleum–especially oil-producing towns like Los Angeles, Huntington Beach and Bakersfield. Kern County is the most productive oil county in the United States. 

The San Francisco Bay area mostly refined rather than produced oil. In the nineteenth century, Richmond’s shoreline was marshland surrounded by rolling hills. In 1880, the Pacific Coast Oil Company built California’s largest refinery in Alameda. Later in 1902, in search of a deeper port, the company moved to Richmond. Pacific Coast Oil later became part of Standard Oil, and then Chevron. 

By the 1950’s, with the capacity to accommodate oceangoing vessels, the Richmond refinery became the largest refinery on the West Coast.¹ An expanding ocean fleet was used to connect the oilfields of Los Angeles and Orange County to Richmond. Oil was also imported overland, via a pipeline from the oil fields of Kern County, California. 

During World War II, the Richmond refinery produced aviation fuel and a wide range of petrochemicals for the war effort. After the war, the Richmond refinery became the first refinery to manufacture paraxylene, a basic component for making the popular polyester fabric Dacron.² The company grew rapidly during this time. 

Today, Chevron receives oil from around the world and including the Amazon.  As an oil state, California processes about 60% of the oil extracted out of Amazon from Ecuador, Peru, and Colombia.³ The number one processor of Amazon crude imports is Richmond’s sister plant in El Segundo – also owned by Chevron.⁴

The refinery is an important economic driver for Richmond. With 3,400 employees it is the city’s largest employer.⁵ The people of Richmond live with pollution as well as revenue from the refinery.

Crude oil comes in through the Golden Gate and refined petroleum products go back out to produce consumer and industrial goods in factories around the world. Some of the finished products, from eyeglasses to shoes to smartphones, come back in to San Francisco Bay inside steel shipping containers.

Petroleum makes the materials of the Albany Bulb possible.  The production of the concrete, steel, and asphalt that make up is rubble all are fueled by fossil fuel products. Even the paint that artists use to give the Bulb a splash of color contains petroleum-based polymers.

---

Footnotes

¹“A New Identity,” History, Chevron, accessed March 21,2021, https://www.chevron.com/about/history.

 ²Pioneering in Petrochemicals,” History, Chevron, accessed March 21,2021, https://www.chevron.com/about/history.

 ³“From Well to Wheel,” Amazon Watch, accessed January 29, 2021, pg. 4, https://amazonwatch.org/assets/files/2016-amazon-crude-report.pdf.

 ⁴“From Well to Wheel,” Amazon Watch, accessed January 29, 2021, pg. 7, https://amazonwatch.org/assets/files/2016-amazon-crude-report.pdf.

 ⁵“City Facts,” Planning and Building Services Department, The City of Richmond, updated January 29, 2020, http://www.ci.richmond.ca.us/DocumentCenter/View/8348/COR-Fact-Sheet?bidId=.

For further reading:

Rego, Nilda. “Chevron Beginnings: W.S. Rheem,” East Bay Times, January 15, 2009 https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2009/01/15/chevron-beginnings-w-s-rheem/.

Monument to Petroleum Refining

Next to the oil barrel models, I made this mosaic of a pumpjack, which extracts petroleum from the ground. When you are at the Bulb, if you scan the mosaic with the Artivive app on your phone, a short video will play. 

You can see the video here by clicking on the image of the mosaic.