Case Study

The City of Richmond in the San Francisco Bay Area has hosted a Chevron refinery for more than a century. The fenceline community living around the facility has dealt with pollution from particulate matter, soot, smog-forming pollution, heavy metals, BTEX (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylenes), and other severe pollutants. Activists have long argued that Chevron’s facility should be shut down and that communities deserve remuneration of some kind for the pollution burden deriving from a profitable oil refinery. 

In 2014, Chevron and Richmond agreed to an environmental and community investment agreement as part of a major modernization project for the facility. This agreement included building new equipment to reduce air pollution emissions, replacing an old hydrogen plant, and installing new monitoring equipment, among other requirements, as part of the approval of the project. The plan included a commitment to the community of $80 million in categories of community programs, scholarship programs, public safety, free internet, competitive grants programs, greenhouse gas reduction, building an on-site solar farm at the facility, and jobs training and skills development support. The annual report a decade later shows the distribution of these programs, totaling $80 million over ten years.

In 2024, Chevron and Richmond entered into a new agreement that will pay the city $550 million over the next ten years. The city had proposed a Richmond Refining Business License Tax on the November 2024 ballot that would have generated an estimated $60 million to $90 million in General Fund revenue annually, but the ballot measure was removed when the agreement was made.

Reference List: 

City of Richmond, California and Chevron Products Company, a Division of Chevron U.S.A. Inc., “CHEVRON REFINERY MODERNIZATION PROJECT ENVIRONMENTAL AND COMMUNITY INVESTMENT AGREEMENT.”

Umanzor, “Richmond Will Get $550M from Chevron to Take Oil Refining Tax off Ballot.”

City of Richmond, “FY 2022 – 23  Environmental &  Community  Investment  Agreement  (ECIA) Annual  Report.”