Chevron’s Sutherland: Leadership principles that turn the tides

Since the acquisition of its Pasadena refinery in 2019, Chevron has invested in the facility’s people, processes, systems and equipment, and now it has begun building a recently approved expansion called the Light Tight Oil (LTO) project scheduled for completion in 2024.

At the helm of all this activity focused on safe, reliable, profitable operations is Chevron Pasadena Refinery General Manager Tim Sutherland.

Learning early on in life he had a certain natural mechanical inclination, Sutherland worked as an automotive mechanic in high school and for a few years before college.

“This experience really helped drive home the direction I could see myself going at an early age,” Sutherland said. Following that insight, he went on to earn both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering from the University of California, Davis.

Sutherland began working for Chevron in 1991 and has been with the company for 31 years. He is the only Chevron employee who has worked at all five of the company’s domestic refineries, which are in Richmond, Calif.; Salt Lake City, Utah; Pascagoula, Miss.; El Segundo, Calif.; and Pasadena, Texas, where he has now worked for more than three years. The majority of Sutherland’s career has encompassed reliability engineering, including machinery and fixed equipment, major capital projects and turnarounds.

Besides his natural-born skill set, Sutherland’s soft-skill abilities eased his rise through the ranks within Chevron and is why he serves as a member of the company’s manufacturing leadership team.

“I have found that in a leadership position, clear communication and strategic direction, setting expectations, observing performance, giving feedback and truly taking the time to coach your employees are essential traits if you expect people to follow,” Sutherland said.

“I’ve always wanted to be part of an operational team,” Sutherland said. “People want to follow leaders who are passionate about what they do, leaders who are in it to ensure the success of the team. That’s one of my guiding principles.”

This is how Sutherland was able to overcome some of his biggest challenges as a plant manager. “Addressing historical under-investment in people and processes at the Pasadena Refinery is something I’m very proud of,” Sutherland said. “With an unwavering prioritization to improve processes and modernize the facility, especially considering the plant was built in 1920 and is more than 100 years old, our team developed a plan and stuck with it.”

“At the Pasadena Refinery, we resolutely follow Chevron’s 10 tenets of operation based on two overarching themes. First, there is always time to do it right and second, do it safely or not at all,” he said.

Sutherland said his team has done incredibly well with contractors by hiring companies with proven safety track records, consolidating services and actively managing relationships.

“We give all employees and contractors stop work authority if they sense something is not right, and we conduct non-punitive incident and near-miss investigations.”

Chevron is also committed to sustainability, which is built into the way the company manages its work, Sutherland said. Focused on environmentally responsible operations, Chevron employs effective measures like leak detection and repair, recycling and emission control. But the commitment doesn’t stop with Chevron’s existing equipment and technology

“We’re constantly pursuing innovations that improve environmental performance across our operations, as well as applying new technologies and procedures to help us generate less waste, improve waste recovery and use safer materials,” Sutherland said, noting that Chevron has made a commitment to produce 100,000 b/d of renewal fuels by 2030.

The company also launched Chevron New Energies (CNE) in 2021 to accelerate the company’s energy transition strategy by growing lower carbon businesses. Chevron aims to target harder-to-abate sectors to build competitive advantages over time. CNE will focus on growing three key businesses consistent with this strategy: hydrogen; carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS); and offsets and other emerging lower carbon opportunities.

Sutherland said Chevron relies on environmental policies that stress open dialogue with its communities and neighbors. The refinery’s community support focus areas include health, education, economic development and the environment.

To continue strengthening ties with the facility’s surrounding community, Sutherland serves on the board of the East Harris County Manufacturing Association, an organization that works to build relationships among industry and community stakeholders in the Houston Ship Channel area.

“Our Pasadena Refinery, and Chevron as a whole, firmly believe in forming solid relationships with the communities in which we operate,” Sutherland said. “We’re part of the community, we want to support it and we can, so we do!”

Sutherland is personally involved in mentoring, volunteering and supporting local businesses, and the refinery employees volunteer in myriad ways, including mentoring students, providing school supplies, building community gardens, repairing homes for senior citizens, supporting food drives, donating toys for kids during the holidays and more.

“We are humbled by the warm welcome from the community since we began operating here in 2019, and were honored to be named 2021 Industry of the Year by the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce,” Sutherland said. “It feels good to have such strong partnership with the Pasadena community, especially as we begin our new expansion with the LTO project. Executing this major capital project is a vote of confidence in the future of the facility and Pasadena community.”

The LTO project is designed to help address the challenges of meeting growing demand for affordable, reliable and ever-cleaner energy. It will modestly increase Chevron’s capacity to process Texas light crude oil produced from the prolific Permian Basin.

“In addition to increasing throughput, the project will provide more flexibility to adjust our product slate quickly to supply the ever-changing needs of the market, as well as help us improve facility reliability and process safety, while reducing permitted emissions,” Sutherland said.

The world needs a growing supply of many forms of energy, particularly in the developing world as standards of living improve, he added.

“The Pasadena Refinery will continue to serve as a great place to expand Chevron’s Gulf Coast refining system to process more crude oil, provide supply to Chevron and Texaco stations in Texas and Louisiana and optimize synergies with our refinery in Pascagoula, Miss., through product exchanges and turnaround maintenance coordination,” Sutherland said.

“We want to be known for our safe, reliable and profitable operations. We want our people to enjoy rewarding careers while being an integral part of the Chevron community,” Sutherland said proudly. “In fact, at the Chevron Pasadena Refinery, we are striving to be the refinery that others consider a pacesetter for excellence.”