Chevron, Contra Costa County Assessor’s Office Reach Tax Settlement Agreement

Chevron U.S.A. Inc. announced today that it has reached an agreement with the Contra Costa County Assessor’s Office to resolve property tax appeals for the years 2004-2012 concerning its Richmond Refinery.

As part of the settlement agreement, both the County Board of Supervisors and the Richmond City Council voted to approve the agreement, ending all of their respective tax claims and litigation. Chevron has previously indicated that the refinery property has been overvalued by the county. Under the terms of the agreement, Chevron has waived its claims to hundreds of millions of dollars in over assessed property taxes and will not pursue its past tax appeals.

Chevron believes the settlement discussions have fostered a better relationship with the County Assessor and will help bring the assessed value for the Richmond Refinery in line with other refineries in the Bay Area and the United States.

This agreement will also ensure greater fiscal stability to Contra Costa County’s local communities, including the City of Richmond. “Chevron is pleased to have resolved the tax issues with the Contra Costa County Assessor’s Office to ensure that we are able to preserve funding for essential services and the County’s public schools,” said Kory Judd, Chevron Richmond Refinery General Manager. “We are focused on moving forward and continuing to partner with the community to build a strong economic future for the County and the City of Richmond.”

Chevron and the Contra Costa County Assessor’s Office worked together over a year to reach this settlement. The assessed tax value is a complicated process based on several factors, such as:

· Estimating the cost of reproducing the existing improvements;
 · Comparing the assessed property to similar properties that have recently sold;
· Estimating the future income to be produced by the property and discounting the future income into an estimate of the current market value.

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Chevron Statement On Richmond Fire Settlement

This is Chevron's Statement on the Richmond Fire Matter:

Chevron U.S.A. has resolved this matter by agreement with the offices of the Contra Costa County District Attorney and the Attorney General of the State of California, and approved by the Superior Court of Contra Costa County. We are committed to continuous improvement in process safety and reliability at the refinery. · Since the fire, we have worked to address issues identified in our investigation report, and by the U.S. Chemical Safety Board and CAL-OSHA. · We have worked more than 1.9 million hours over 259 days to repair and improve the Crude Unit. · We have reimbursed community members and local government agencies in Richmond and West Contra Costa County for medical and response-related costs. · We are conducting a comprehensive inspection of our refinery. To date, we have inspected over 16,000 individual piping components. We are also implementing a multi-million-dollar expansion of our air-monitoring system to include several sites in the surrounding communities.

Stay tuned.

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