If not for Captain John Barneson, the ExxonMobil oil refinery would possibly by no means have come to Torrance.

Born in Scotland on Jan. 1, 1862, Barneson spent his early years piloting transport ships earlier than establishing his own shipping company in San Francisco within the 1890s.

Barneson firm was called upon to function troop ships in the course of the Spanish-American Struggle in 1898. He grew to become satisfied that oil-powered ships would quickly turn into standard within the business, and his career focus began to turn from shipping to oil transport.

Barneson noticed that California had no option to deliver oil from its fields within the central valley to the ports the place ships increasingly had been relying upon the fuel for operation.

He formed a pipeline firm, and began to build oil pipelines from central California oilfields to coastal ports. After constructing one such pipeline to Monterey, he turned his attention to theLos Angeles space, the place San Pedro had been not too long ago designated as the city official port.

Barneson was fast to recognize the need for an oil transportation network connecting the burgeoning new port to oil sources.

After working with Esperanza Consolidated Oil Company, he determined to form his personal firm in 1912, the final Petroleum Company of Southern California.

He set about constructing another pipeline, this one from the Bakersfield oilfields down by Tehachapi and from there to Los Angeles, where it delivered crude oil to Basic Petroleum refinery in Vernon, just south of downtown. From there, the gas could be transported to waiting ships in Los Angeles Harbor.

Enterprise boomed, and Basic Petroleum began to see that its Vernon facilities had been becoming too small to handle the demand. A larger facility nearer to the port appeared to be the logical answer.

In January 1927, the company purchased about 900 acres in central Torrance for about $2.5 million from the Dominguez family for the purposes of constructing a new refinery there.

The plan was to build a refinery with a lot bigger capability using components from the Vernon plant as it was being dismantled.

Development is in full swing at the general Petroleum plant in central Torrance in this Each day Breeze file photograph taken in early 1929.

Floor was broken for the brand new plant in late 1928, and it became operational in April 1929.

By this time, Basic Petroleum had become a subsidiary of the standard Oil Firm of recent York. Referred to as oconyfor short, it was one of the abycorporations resulting the breakup of Customary Oil monopoly within the early 1900s.

The completed General Petroleum plant in Torrance in 1929, bottom center. (Day by day Breeze file photo)

The brand new plant had a refining capability of 30,000 barrels a day and was one and a half times bigger than the Vernon refinery had been. (Its modern-day incarnation can course of 149,500 barrels each day.)

Quickly after its opening, although, expansion turned essential, and the refinery began the primary of many enlargements, this one happening during the first years of the Depression.

It will function one of many city largest employers, using as many as 3,000 throughout its early years, and at present using round 800.

During World Battle II, the refinery was completely retooled in order to supply aviation fuel for the battle effort.

The refinery can be known for many years as the overall Petroleum refinery, or just Pfor brief.

In reality, it had that name officially for less than a few years, from 1929-1931.

From 1931-1955, its official name was Socony-Vacuum Oil Co, following Socony merger in 1931 with Vacuum Oil Firm. In 1955, it became the Socony-Mobil Oil Co.., and in 1966, Socony-Mobil became simply the Mobil Oil Firm.

For the next three many years, the Torrance facility was known as the Mobil Oil Refinery.

The merger of Exxon and Mobil in 1999 resulted within the renaming of the company Torrance refinery because the ExxonMobil refinery in 2000, the name it presently has.

The ExxonMobil refinery in Torrance is reportedly on the market. The refinery is one in all the most important employers in town. October 2014 photograph. (Robert Casillas, Every day Breeze workers photographer)

As for Captain Barneson, he labored for Common Petroleum in addition to serving as an government vice president of Socony before retiring in 1928 as a consequence of sick health.

He spent an excellent deal of his spare time competitively racing his yacht, Edris, within the Bay Area through the 1920s and nineteen thirties. He died in San Mateo on Feb.