Valero Energy’s Jean-Gaulin Refinery Stands Out for its Environmental Performance and Operational Reliability
Photo: Joe Gorder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Valero Energy Corporation with members of the executive team and the awardees of the 2021 Chairman’s Award, including Martine Peloquin, VP and General Manager, and Carl Marcotte, Director of Refinery Operations at the Jean-Gaulin Refinery.
Each year, Valero Energy Corporation recognizes among its 15 refineries and 12 ethanol plants, those that have recorded the best performance in terms of safety, environmental stewardship and reliability. At the traditional Chairman’s Awards ceremony, the Jean-Gaulin refinery in Lévis received two of the four awards presented this year.
An Exemplary Environmental Performance in 2021
Environmental performance for Valero continues to improve with 2019, 2020 and 2021 reflecting the best overall three-year performance in our history. Over the last five years, Valero has reduced the total number of environmental incidents among its refineries by nearly 30%.
With no scorecard events in two of the last three years and no Tier 1 or Tier 2 process safety events, the Jean Gaulin refinery won its second Chairman’s Environmental Award this year.
Ninth Recognition for Operational Reliability
As for refinery reliability, Valero Energy Corporation evaluates the performance of its refineries based on two criteria for the year:
- The number of downtime events, both stewardable and non-stewardable
- The percentage of refinery unit downtime, both annualized turnaround downtime and downtime outside of turnarounds
Valero’s overall mechanical availability in 2021 was once again within the top quartile of industry and tied with its second-best ever performance at 97.2%. This past year was the second-best reliability performance ever and Valero has now operated within the top quartile of industry in four of the last five years.
Both turnaround and non-turnaround downtimes are at industry-best levels of performance. Annualized turnaround downtime is now at the lowest ever.
For the ninth year now, the Jean-Gaulin refinery has received the Chairman’s Reliability Award in recognition of its outstanding performance in operational reliability. Among its achievements, the Lévis refinery:
- has had no stewardable unit outages in two of the last three years;
- has the lowest number of total downtime events in the circuit over the last three years; and
- had no unit downtime outside of turnaround this past year and has the least amount of unit downtime outside of turnarounds over the last three years
Valero Energy’s Jean-Gaulin refinery is proud of its safety, environmental and reliability record and continues to strive for outstanding performance. The presentation of these two awards confirms the importance of our efforts in this regard.
