Business View Magazine | March 2018

141 B aytown,Texas is a citywithinHarris County, and partially in Chambers County,in the Gulf Coast region of the Lonestar State.Located within theHouston–Sugar Land–Baytown metropolitan area,the cityof approximately85,000 lies along both State Highway146 andU.S.Interstate 10.The areawhich became Baytown began to be set- tled as earlyas 1822,but it’s real naturewas formed in the early1900s,whenTexas startedbecoming awash in oil.In 1916,theHumbleOil and Refining Company,founded byone-timeTexas governor Ross S.Sterling and his associates,built the first offshore drilling operation inTexas,and the second in the United States,in the nearbyGoose CreekOil Field. Today,the foremost driver of Baytown’s economy is the downstreamportion of the oil and gas sector. Whereas the upstreamsector focuses on the produc- tion of those two fossil fuels,downstream takes what is produced andmanufactures plastics and other chemicals from the rawmaterial.Threemain corpo- rate 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; the Baytown Re- STRONGAND STABLE AT A GLANCE: BAYTOWN, TEXAS WHAT: A city of 85,000 WHERE: The Gulf Coast region, 26 miles east of Houston WEBSITE: www.baytown.org