The largest oil refinery in the US is the Port Arthur Refinery in Port Arthur, run by Motiva Enterprises (Saudi Aramco), with about 656,400 barrels per day of crude distillation capacity. The 10 largest are all run by big integrated or independent refiners, and eight of them are on the Gulf Coast.
The ranking below updates from our US oil refineries map, which is built from the EIA Refinery Capacity Report.
Key takeaways
- Motiva’s Port Arthur refinery in Texas is the largest in the US by crude capacity, followed by Marathon’s Galveston Bay refinery and Marathon’s Garyville refinery in Louisiana.
- The 10 largest refineries hold nearly 30% of US crude distillation capacity.
- Garyville, which came online in 1977, is the last large refinery built from scratch in the US (EIA).
- Texas and Louisiana together hold about half of US refining capacity.
The 15 largest oil refineries in the US
| # | Refinery | Operator | Location | Crude capacity (b/d) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Port Arthur Refinery | Motiva Enterprises (Saudi Aramco) | Port Arthur, TX | 656,400 |
| 2 | Galveston Bay Refinery | Marathon Petroleum | Texas City, TX | 631,000 |
| 3 | Garyville Refinery | Marathon Petroleum | Garyville, LA | 617,000 |
| 4 | Beaumont Refinery | ExxonMobil | Beaumont, TX | 612,000 |
| 5 | Baytown Refinery | ExxonMobil | Baytown, TX | 564,500 |
| 6 | Baton Rouge Refinery | ExxonMobil | Baton Rouge, LA | 523,500 |
| 7 | Lake Charles Refinery | Citgo Petroleum | Lake Charles, LA | 471,200 |
| 8 | Whiting Refinery | BP | Whiting, IN | 435,000 |
| 9 | Port Arthur Refinery | Valero Energy | Port Arthur, TX | 385,000 |
| 10 | Los Angeles Refinery | Marathon Petroleum | Carson, CA | 365,000 |
| 11 | Pascagoula Refinery | Chevron | Pascagoula, MS | 356,440 |
| 12 | Wood River Refinery | Phillips 66 | Roxana, IL | 345,000 |
| 13 | Pine Bend Refinery | Flint Hills Resources (Koch Industries) | Rosemount, MN | 335,000 |
| 14 | Deer Park Refinery | Pemex | Deer Park, TX | 312,500 |
| 15 | Catlettsburg Refinery | Marathon Petroleum | Catlettsburg, KY | 307,000 |
Atmospheric crude distillation capacity in barrels per calendar day. Source: EIA Refinery Capacity Report, with later closures and restarts applied.
The top five, in brief
- Port Arthur, Texas (Motiva). Owned by Saudi Aramco through Motiva, Port Arthur has been the largest US refinery since a major expansion in 2012.
- Galveston Bay, Texas City (Marathon). Marathon’s largest refinery. Marathon’s fact sheet lists about 1,550 employees.
- Garyville, Louisiana (Marathon). Built in 1977 at 200,000 barrels per day and expanded to more than three times that size (EIA).
- Beaumont, Texas (ExxonMobil). Grew sharply after a 2023 crude unit expansion and is now ExxonMobil’s largest US refinery.
- Baytown, Texas (ExxonMobil). Part of one of the largest integrated refining and petrochemical complexes in the US, on the Houston Ship Channel.
Where the largest refineries are
Most of the giants sit on the Gulf Coast, close to crude supply, export docks and petrochemical plants. Six of the top 10 are within about three hours’ drive of Houston. See refineries in Houston, oil refineries in Texas and oil refineries in Louisiana for full lists.
Largest US refining companies
Measured across all their refineries, Marathon Petroleum is the largest US refiner.
| # | Operator | Refineries | Crude capacity (b/d) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Marathon Petroleum | 13 | 2,986,000 |
| 2 | Valero Energy | 12 | 2,086,300 |
| 3 | ExxonMobil | 4 | 1,967,000 |
| 4 | Phillips 66 | 8 | 1,713,700 |
| 5 | Chevron | 5 | 1,060,181 |
| 6 | PBF Energy | 7 | 1,042,200 |
| 7 | Citgo Petroleum | 3 | 824,223 |
| 8 | HF Sinclair | 8 | 720,005 |
| 9 | Flint Hills Resources (Koch Industries) | 3 | 712,500 |
| 10 | BP | 2 | 673,500 |
Who works at the largest refineries?
A refinery the size of Port Arthur or Galveston Bay employs well over a thousand people, from operators and lab technicians to process, reliability and inspection engineers. See the main oil refinery jobs and pay.
Hiring for a large refinery or petrochemical plant? Apollo Technical recruits process, chemical, mechanical, electrical and controls engineers for Gulf Coast refiners from our Houston engineering team. See our chemical engineering recruiters.
