Martinez Refinery, California

The Martinez Refinery is the second largest refinery in the Bay Area, after Chevron, and was the first American refinery built by the Shell Oil company, in 1915. It is operated by Equilon, a joint partnership of Shell and Texaco, and processes around 165,000 barrels of crude per day. Some of the products produced there include diesel and jet fuel, gasoline, asphalt, liquefied petroleum gas, and sulfur. It is connected to oil fields in the Central Valley by a 170-mile long pipeline. Martinez is an industrial area with two major oil refineries, two chemical plants (Shell Chemical and Rhodia), and several hazardous waste dumps. The area is also known for being naturalist John Muir's home for much of his life. The first major industry to locate in Martinez was a copper smelter and fertilizer plant, built on a rise next to the Bay called Bull's Head Point, a site that was later taken over by the Rhone-Poulenc sulfuric acid plant, which is now owned by Rhodia, a French chemical company.