LANDMARK / EL SEGUNDO

Chevron El Segundo Refinery

The oil refinery the city grew up around. Standard Oil of California built it in 1911-1912 as its second California refinery, which is where the name El Segundo (Spanish for 'the second') comes from. Chevron runs it today, and it takes up more than a quarter of the city.

Generated poster art of a coastal refinery skyline at dusk, with storage tanks, stacks and towers across the water and a low sun. Not a photograph. — Generated art made with ChatGPT image generation for elsegundo.xyz. Not a photograph. Image credits

Type: Refinery
Where: El Segundo, CA (street address not given by source); in the southwest part of the city, just south of Smoky Hollow
Website: elsegundo.chevron.com

What the sources say

Each line links the public source it comes from.

Started operations: 1911 elsegundo.chevron.com
Built: 1911-1912 by Standard Oil Company of California, its second large California refinery after Richmond (1902) pcad.lib.washington.edu
Site selection: El Segundo was chosen in 1911 as the site of the second California refinery elsegundo.chevron.com
Centennial: Marked 100 years of operation in 2011 elsegundo.chevron.com
Size: Approximately 1,000 acres (Chevron fact sheet) elsegundo.chevron.com
Share of city: About 840 acres and more than a quarter of the city (Wikipedia) en.wikipedia.org
Capacity: Rated 290,000 barrels per day; began at 5,000 barrels per day elsegundo.chevron.com
Products: Mainly gasoline, jet fuel and diesel, plus fuel oils, coke and LPG elsegundo.chevron.com
City name: Named for Standard's second California refinery; name credited to Virginia Wright Hanna, wife of Standard Oil general manager Richard Judd Hanna lastreetnames.com

Sources and checks

Sources checked October 29, 2026.

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Not an official City of El Segundo page. Hours, prices and access stay with the place itself.