Standard Oil of California

Standard Oil Company of California, the San Francisco oil company that sold under the Chevron name, bought asbestos fiber for its asphalt roof coatings, driveway sealers and other asphalt coatings, and sold Chevron Asbestos Roof Coating. Its Chevron Research subsidiary told EPA in 1980 that eleven of its coatings contained 2% to 18% asbestos. Union Carbide sales reports say Chevron left the asbestos sealer business in the early 1980s; the company was not bankrupt and no asbestos trust pays claims for it.

Draft. The history on this page was written from the documents in our library and has not yet been reviewed by a person.

History

Standard Oil Company of California changed its name to Chevron Corporation in 1984. In Sabetian v. Exxon Mobil Corp. (2020), the California Court of Appeal wrote that Chevron "is the successor in interest to Standard Oil Company of California and Gulf Oil Corporation," naming Standard Oil Company of California among the American oil companies that signed a 1954 agreement with Iran; a 2021 decision of the same court says the same of Chevron Corporation and Chevron U.S.A. Inc.⁷⁸ This entry covers only what our library's documents show about the company and asbestos. A 1978 letterhead in the Union Carbide exhibits describes Chevron Research Company of Richmond, California, as "A Standard Oil Company of California Subsidiary."⁹

Asbestos at the Richmond refinery

A 1946 architectural manual from Western Asbestos Co. lists its Corrugated Transite installations. Among them are many buildings at Standard Oil Company of California's Richmond refinery, including the power house, control houses, compressor buildings, a laboratory and furnace roofs.¹⁰ At a Johns-Manville "Asbestos & Health" customer meeting in San Francisco on December 4, 1973, the attendees included a plant engineer and a safety engineer from Standard Oil of California's Richmond refinery. Chevron Asphalt Co. sent its research director, a plant manager and an industrial hygienist.¹¹

Asbestos fiber for asphalt coatings

In 1959 a Union Carbide salesman surveying West Coast asbestos markets reported on a call at Standard Oil of California in San Francisco. He wrote that "Standard Oil, as well as many other petroleum producers, purchases asbestos for incorporation into asphalt roofing." He said it bought 2 to 3 carloads a year of a Johns-Manville 7R grade.¹ A Chevron Asphalt Company raw-material specification for asbestos fiber from 1976 calls for chrysotile graded by the Quebec Standard Test.¹² Lake Asbestos of Quebec's report for 1975 records discussions with Chevron Asphalt Co. on the properties of samples of National 7M5 and 7R5 fiber for roof-coating use.¹³

From the 1970s Union Carbide tried to sell Chevron its Calidria asbestos. In 1975 its salesman T. P. Norris called on Chevron Chemical to develop a Calidria grade "as a replacement for various Canadian grades in asphaltic coatings," including a playground coating called "Walk Top."¹⁴ His report on a March 1976 production trial at Chevron Asphalt's Oakland plant says the first 200 pounds was dumped into a ribbon blender without Chevron's plant superintendent, safety engineer, process engineer or the industrial hygiene officer who was to run dust counts in attendance. Both trials succeeded, it says, but mixing took longer than with the Johns-Manville fiber.¹⁵ By June 1976 the Calidria grade was no longer being considered for Walk Top, and Norris named Calaveras Asbestos of Copperopolis, California, as the strong contender.¹⁶

Union Carbide's third-quarter 1978 summary expected sales of its HPO grade to Chevron U.S.A. at 165 tons a year for the San Francisco Bay area.¹⁷ In January 1981 Norris reported that HPO had been approved in place of Johns-Manville 7R in Chevron's driveway asphalt sealers, at about 250 tons a year, but that Union Carbide had lost a 250-ton HPO roof-coating account "because of packaging problem."¹⁸ A 1979 call at a Chevron plant in Mobile, Alabama, recorded that it used 2 to 3 carloads a year of Johns-Manville fiber for its asphalt products.¹⁹

What the documents show

Chevron's case for asbestos coatings. In a September 1978 letter to Union Carbide, J. H. Macpherson, a vice-president of Chevron Research, said Chevron had been searching for several years for an asbestos replacement in its asphalt-based coatings. He said asbestos let a thick film build without sagging and reduced alligatoring of the asphalt, and concluded that "at present we have no practical substitute for asbestos in our coatings."⁹²⁰ Union Carbide sent the letter to the California Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board with its own testimony on exemptions for asbestos coatings.²¹

In February 1980 Chevron Research commented to EPA on its proposed rules for asbestos in commercial products.³ The letter said Chevron U.S.A. made eleven asbestos-containing coatings, among them asbestos roof coating, fibrated aluminum coating, undercoating and coatings for recreational surfaces.⁴ It said the coatings it made in 1978, 3.5 million gallons, used 2.3 million pounds of asbestos.²² It argued that the asbestos was "encapsulated" and the coatings "nonfriable," so they did not release free fibers during application or use.³ For spraying it relied on a Union Carbide briefing paper, not its own measurements.²² These are Chevron's own statements about its products.

Leaving asbestos. The Union Carbide reports give different reasons for losing Chevron's roof-coating business. The January 1981 report blamed a packaging problem.¹⁸ An April 1982 report says Chevron's production people found the HPO grade "too dusty compared with the Canadian pressure packed material," and that Chevron expected to leave the asphalt sealer market within a few months.²³ An April 1983 report says "Union problems regarding dust emissions" had sent the business back to Johns-Manville. It adds that Chevron had "already quit the production of asbestos-contained driveway sealers."⁵

Products

Our product records list Chevron Asbestos Roof Coating, shown on a 5-gallon pail labeled Standard Oil Company of California.²

References

1. UC-2642: T. J. Hall to A. E. Pufahl and Others on West Coast Asbestos Markets (1959), p. 6
2. Chevron Asbestos Roof Coating (Standard Oil of California); Package: Chevron Asbestos Roof Coating, 5-gallon pail, ACL Doc 20668
3. UC-4547: Chevron Research Company to EPA: Comments on TSCA Advance Notice on Asbestos Fibers in Coatings (1980), p. 1
4. UC-4547, p. 3
5. UC-4774: T. P. Norris and G. L. Dickson Customer Call Report on Chevron Research, Richmond, CA (1983), p. 1
6. Asbestos trusts A–Z
7. Sabetian v. Exxon Mobil Corp. (California Court of Appeal, 2020)
8. Irani v. Exxon Mobil Corporation (California Court of Appeal, 2021)
9. UC-3008: H. B. Rhodes to Ron Rinaldi, CAL-OSHA Standards Board, Transmitting Union Carbide Testimony on Asbestos Coating Exemptions (1978), p. 33
10. Western Asbestos Co.: Architectural Manual (1946), p. 146
11. AIA-112: Johns-Manville Corporation, A Condensation of Environmental Facts on Asbestos and Health, with Customer Seminar Attendee Lists (1974), p. 37
12. UC-249: Chevron Asphalt Company Raw Material Stock Specifications #142 and #195 for Asbestos Fiber (1976), p. 1
13. Lake Asbestos of Quebec, Ltd.: Report on Operations, Year 1975 (1976), p. 55
14. UC-707: T. P. Norris Customer Call Reports on Chevron Chemical and Chevron Asphalt Regarding HPP in Asphaltic Coatings (1975–1976), p. 1
15. UC-4466: T. P. Norris Call Report on Chevron Asphalt Production Trial of HPP in Asphaltic Coatings (1976), p. 1
16. UC-4467: T. P. Norris Customer Call Report on Chevron Asphalt Company and HPP Asbestos Sales Prospects (1976), p. 1
17. UC-2871: John L. Myers to G. R. Adams Transmitting Third-Quarter 1978 Calidria Sales and Marketing Services Summaries (1978), p. 4
18. UC-4552: T. P. Norris Customer Call Report on Chevron U.S.A., Inc. (San Francisco) re HPO for Driveway Asphalt Sealers (1981), p. 1
19. UC-4545: S. E. Welsh Call Report on Chevron, Mobile, Alabama, on SG130 in Driveway Sealers (1979), p. 1
20. UC-3008, p. 34
21. UC-3008, p. 4
22. UC-4547, p. 4
23. UC-4644: Gordon L. Dickson Call Report on Chevron U.S.A., Inc. (San Francisco) Regarding HPO in Sealers and Roof Coatings (1982), p. 1

Asbestos products

3 products our documents name Standard Oil of California as making or selling. Each product's page says what the documents say about it, including its asbestos content.

• Aluminum Asbestos (Standard Oil of California)
• Blackstone Asbestos Roof Coating (Standard Oil of California)
• Chevron Asbestos Roof Coating (Standard Oil of California)

In our library

1 document in our library name Standard Oil of California, by collection.

Other library documents (1)

• Package: Chevron Asbestos Roof Coating, 5-gallon pail (Standard Oil Company of California) (publisher)

In the Union Carbide documents

Standard Oil of California is named in 4 Union Carbide documents dated 1959 to 1971 (4 mentioned), from asbestos lawsuits over Union Carbide's Calidria asbestos. All are published in our collection.

• T. J. Hall to Dr. A. E. Pufahl on West Coast Asbestos Markets and Customer Calls (1959) Union Carbide 42 (mentioned)
• Union Carbide Sales Memo on West Coast Asbestos Markets (1959) with Calidria RG-244 Call Reports and Mixing Tests at Reichhold, Jacksonville (1970, 1975) UC-942 (mentioned)
• T. J. Hall to A. E. Pufahl and Others on West Coast Asbestos Markets (1959) UC-2642 (mentioned)
• D. E. Deese to L. T. Windel Transmitting Walsh-Healey Act Materials, with Attached Walsh-Healey Safety Checklists and NAM Analysis (1971) UC-1936 (mentioned)

Names in the documents

The spellings documents use for Standard Oil of California, OCR misreadings included, so a search for any of them finds this page: Standard Oil Company of California.

Where this comes from

This page brings together every document in our library that names Standard Oil of California, across collections. Titles and affiliations are taken from the documents themselves, and units and subsidiaries are grouped under the company they belong to.