Rodeo Refinery, California

The refinery in Rodeo was the first of the five major oil refineries now operating on the shores of the Bay Area. The plant was built in 1896, and now covers more than 1,000 acres. It processes 100,000 barrels of crude per day, to make mostly gasoline. For years it was owned by Unocal, and was bought by Tosco in 1997, one of eight refineries in the U. S. then owned by Tosco. In 2001, Tosco was acquired for $7 billion by Phillips Petroleum. Phillips had already bought out ARCO's Alaskan crude oil production properties for $6.5 billion. Like most refineries, Rodeo has a co-generation plant on site that produces steam and electricity with heat generated by the refining process, as well as natural gas. At times Rodeo generates more power than it needs, and the surplus is sold to PG&E and is distributed on the grid. Cracking is the refinery term for heating crude and low grade oils to the point where they change at a molecular level into new products, and this is done at the plant's Coking Unit 200. Adjacent to it, with two stacks, the Unicracker-Reformer Complex continues the process and adds hydrogen.