White collar refinery worker trades career in oil for biofuel

As the world moves away from fossil fuels, we spoke with local folks who’ve made the jump in recent years from working in oil and gas to working for clean energy companies in Southern California. This is one story in that four-part series.

Read the introduction here: From fossil fuels to clean energy: Profiles of locals who’ve made the switch

Read about a second worker here: Permit expert’s career switch from oil to clean energy pleases ‘hippy’ parents

Read about a third worker here: Exxon engineer who moved to clean energy offers career advice: ‘Take a leap’

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Kathy Gleeson of Fullerton didn’t actually set out to change from an oil refinery job to a renewable fuels job. Instead, the job changed around her.

As she worked her way through Cal State Fullerton, earning a finance degree in the late 1970s and early ’80s, Gleeson took various jobs through a temp agency. One landed her in accounting for Independent Valley Energy Company, which then had a small oil refinery in Bakersfield. That company produced synthetic crude oil, then sent it down to Paramount Petroleum’s larger refinery for further processing.

By the mid ’80s, as an oil glut drove down prices from the previous decade’s energy crisis, Gleeson said both companies were “floundering.” When they merged, in 1984, she went to the Paramount facility. “Been here ever since,” she said with a laugh.

Independent Valley Energy is one of 27 oil refineries that’s shut down in California over the years, per records with the California Energy Commission. Eighteen other refineries are still active. And three more are listed as idle, including the facility where Gleeson now works.

But these days that facility is known as World Energy, the name of the company that bought it in 2018.

Even prior to the deal, owners of the 65-acre refinery in Paramount were converting the facility to produce renewable fuels. Today, it’s one of the few plants worldwide using hydrogen to turn used cooking oil and tallow into more climate-friendly jet fuel.

World Energy kept many of the oil refinery workers on during the transition five years ago. Some who were let go continued working in oil and gas, moving to refineries in Carson or Wilmington, Gleeson said. And, she added, they’ve been able to bring others back as the startup has grown, with managers eager to tap the experience those workers have.

“The technology is very similar,” she said. “So you want people that understand the same type of operation.”

Her own salary and work as director of environmental services, helping to permit equipment and ensure compliance with regulations, doesn’t look much different since the transition, Gleeson said. But a few things have changed.

“With the refinery, we were thinking about surviving day to day because the industry was slowing — and particularly asphalt, which was our little niche,” Gleeson said. So pivoting to renewable fuels, she said, “brought us back into business.”

While regulations and environmental rules are still rigid, she also said her company faces less opposition than it did when it was an oil refinery.

“You see a difference in the community support and the regulatory support, because federal and state (regulators) are really encouraging renewable fuels operations.”

And while Gleeson said it’s been a bit sad to see the dismantling of a plant she worked to permit for so many years, she’s excited for what’s ahead.

“Having your customers come running to you because you’re selling this product that’s going to help them meet their goals, it’s good. It feels like you’re doing something positive out there.”

Source: Orange County Register