Baytown, Texas

BAYTOWN, TEXAS Creek Oil Field. Today, the foremost driver of Baytown’s economy is the downstream portion of the oil and gas sector. Whereas the upstream sector focuses on the production of those two fossil fuels, downstream takes what is produced and manufactures plastics and other chemicals from the raw materials. Three main corporate anchors of Baytown are ExxonMobil, Chevron Phillips Chemical, and Covestro LLC. The ExxonMobil Baytown Complex, founded in 1919, is one of the world’s largest industrial complexes, and the Baytown Refinery located there is the largest in the United States. The Covestro manufacturing site is their largest in North and Central America, producing a variety of high-tech polymer materials, and the Cedar Bayou plant, in operation since 1963, is Chevron Phillips Chemical’s largest manufacturing site in the U.S. Over the last several years, the availability of relatively cheap and plentiful natural gas has allowed several of those major manufacturing facilities to undergo multi-billion dollar expansions. And all of that new money, with perhaps more to come, has afforded the City of Baytown the opportunity to embark upon many ambitious projects for the benefit of its citizens, estimated to be more than 90,000 residents. It’s a time of significant growth. One such effort was the San Jacinto Boulevard Project, whose aim was to create a parallel road to the west of Garth Road, Baytown’s major commercial corridor, which had become extremely congested. “San Jacinto Blvd. is now open in all its glory and I’ve never received so many compliments for anything I’ve done in my career as that boulevard,” exclaims City Manager, Rick Davis. “It is a gorgeous, four-lane boulevard that stretches a goodly portion of the west side of our city from Interstate-10, all the way to a road called Cedar Bayou Lynchburg. Not only that, intersecting at the roundabout at Hunt Road is the beautiful statue of Sam