OVERVIEW

Greka is an independent integrated energy organization with over 150 employees combined in California. We own and operate an asphalt plant in Santa Maria, California along with oil and gas production, exploration and development interests in California with particular concentration in Santa Maria. We sell our oil and gas on the open market. These operations are primarily located in Santa Maria, in Central California 73 miles north of Santa Barbara and 36 miles south of San Luis Obispo on US Highway 101. Today this area is known for vineyards and wineries in addition to other agriculture, but since the early 1930’s and continuing to today it has been a productive and long-lived oil, gas and asphalt exploitation area in California. 

Greka’s holdings primarily consist of: (a) 10,000 barrel per day permitted asphalt refinery and associated equipment, (b) oil and gas producing properties, (c) consolidated assets such as oilfield production equipment and our transportation fleet, and (d) real estate in Santa Barbara County, California. 

ABOUT US

• Integrated Assets

Greka’s Refinery

Our asphalt plant in Santa Maria, California produces light naphtha, kerosene distillate, gas oils and numerous cut-back, paving and emulsion asphalt products. Historically, marketing efforts were focused on the asphalt products that are sold to various users, primarily in the Central and Northern California regions. Distillates are readily marketed to wholesale purchasers. The refinery’s permitted capacity is 10,000 barrels per day.

The original refinery, built in 1932-33 by The Five C Refining Company, was a simple facility that produced naphtha, kerosene distillates, diesel fuel and residuum from oils extracted in the region. Some of these products may have been further refined by others into motor gasoline, heavy oils for power generation and marine fuel for large vessels. The refinery as originally constructed did not have the capability to produce asphalt.  The refinery was privately owned by Five C until 1951 when this company was acquired by Douglas Oil Company of California, which owned two other refineries in California, including Paramount Petroleum.  Douglas upgraded the facility with a vacuum distillation tower that enabled the refinery to produce asphalt.   By 1960, Conoco acquired Douglas (including the refinery) and again substantially upgraded the facility. By the late 1970s, Conoco decided to leave California and ultimately sold the refinery to Saba Petroleum Company in 1994. Saba subcontracted the operations of the refinery to a third party and sold the output until its acquisition by Greka in 1999.  The refinery has essentially been running 24/7, 365 days a year, since the 1930’s and has always been able to sell its full output at market prices. Prior to selling the refinery in 1994, Conoco ran the refinery for 48 years at an output of 10,000 to 12,000 barrels per day.  

The last 10 years asphalt specifications have advanced significantly and will continue to be pushed forward requiring varying degrees of modification with natural rubber, ground tire rubber, polymers, and other additives. The federal government has led the way in developing a performance-grade (PG) rating system for the quality of asphalt and its use in various climatic conditions in an attempt to improve the overall quality of the highways throughout the United States. California will follow these new guidelines, and asphalt manufacturers will have to conform to a much tighter set of specifications.
Greka’s refinery is already capable of processing the various PG-grades utilizing  our local crude supply. Santa Maria Valley crude oil has the physical properties that yield high quality asphalt with a high-susceptibility to the various modifiers, and our staff has experience in making all the currently known formulations. We have delivered product into these high-margin niche markets and anticipate this opportunity will only grow over time.

Greka has marketed its premium asphalt products exclusively in Central California. The Central Coast is geographically isolated from the major California asphalt producers which are located in San Francisco, Bakersfield and Los Angeles. The local market where Greka has a distinct freight advantage extends from the south San Francisco Bay area to Ventura. Construction companies in this area have production facilities. 

Greka’s Oil and Gas Fields

Greka owns over 80 million barrels of oil in place, 470 acres of productive area, 9 pay zones, only 1.9% of oil produced to date. Our interests span over tens of thousands of mineral acres, with the majority of these wells concentrated along the central coast of California. 

The Santa Maria, California area has been a significant oil and gas producing area since the early 1900’s.  The first producing companies were several of “majors” including Union Oil, Shell, and Texaco. Later, these three companies were joined by Conoco.   These companies drilled literally thousands of wells and created an infrastructure of pipelines and facilities that are still useful in energy production in the area today. Several productive oil and gas pay zones were discovered, but these companies focused production in the Monterey zone, generally below 5,000 feet, that yielded the lightest and most profitable crude.   In focusing on the Monterey zone, these majors passed through a shallow zone yielding abundant, but heavier oil. It is this heavy oil that comprises the refinery’s main feedstock today.  Over the years, as the major oil companies began to de-emphasize production in the region, numerous smaller oil production companies came to drill for oil and buy producing properties.  Two of these companies were Saba Petroleum and Vintage Petroleum whose assets are now components of Greka since their acquisition in 1999 and 2002, respectively.  Also in, Greka acquired the assets of Rincon Island Limited Partnership. 

Greka’s oil and gas interests are concentrated in California within four counties: 

Santa Maria Valley (Santa Barbara County) – Greka owns and operates seven fields in the Central Coast area of California.   The fields are in Cat Canyon, Casmalia, Gato Ridge, Santa Maria Valley, Zaca, Clark Avenue and Los Flores in which there are over 1200 wells.  North Belridge (Kern County) – Greka owns and operates this 270-acre field in which there are over 50 wells.  Richfield East Dome Unit (“REDU”) (Orange County) - This property, which is owned and operated by Greka, over 150 wells.  REDU is a mature water flood (one method of secondary recovery in which water is injected into an oil reservoir for the purpose of washing the oil out of the reservoir rock into the bore of a producing well). Waterflood operations were initiated in 1974 by Texaco.  Rincon (Ventura County) – The Rincon Field covers approximately 1700 mineral acres, including a 1-acre island connected to land by a 2700 ft. causeway containing the gas and oil pipelines and facilitating vehicular access.  Rincon Island Limited Partnership owns and operates over 70 wells in this field.  

Greka’s Transportation Fleet

Greka owns a fleet of 12 trucks. This includes 8 tanker trucks and 4 vacuum trucks. The tanker trucks haul 3,400 barrels of product every day around the clock. Tanker trucks are responsible to haul crude from oil production facilities to the Refinery and loading racks in Santa Maria.  The fleet also delivers finished production, gas oil and Naphtha from the Refinery to customers throughout California.  Vacuum truck service includes hot loading wells to stimulate production and enhance recovery, flushing and clearing pipelines, testing wells and pipelines, cleaning vessels, and moving fluid from containers. Greka truck fleet operates 24 hours per day, 7 days a week, providing service to the oil and gas company.

Greka’s Real Estate

Greka owns approximately 3,000 acres of land in Santa Barbara County. This real estate is suitable for farming, residential, industrial, vineyard and grazing uses.
 

• Business Strategy

Greka plans to cost-efficiently boost production rates from the potential drilling locations identified throughout our California fields. Crude oil that we produce from our heavy crude oil reserves that surround our Santa Maria asphalt plant is sold at market prices to the plant. We supplement this equity oil production with third party feedstock to achieve efficiencies at the plant.