Honoree: Enterprise — Energy Industry

Company Description

Houston-based Phillips 66 is a diversified energy manufacturing and logistics company. With a portfolio of Midstream, Chemicals, Refining, and Marketing and Specialties businesses, the company specializes in processing, transporting, storing and marketing fuels and products globally.

Phillips 66 has approximately 14,000 employees worldwide and is active in more than 65 countries. The company’s 1 million-square-foot headquarters is a LEED® Platinum-certified green building, home to 2,000 employees.  Phillips 66 is dedicated to responsible environmental stewardship and pursues partnerships with conservation organizations that support habitat and biodiversity across Texas and beyond.

Sustainable Business Model

Phillips 66 believes that operating excellence leads to strong environmental performance.  The company proactively works to protect the environment and minimize impact by operating with high safety standards.  

Phillips 66’s environmental and sustainability strategy includes enhancing conservation and mitigating impacts to biodiversity. Biodiversity conservation is addressed by Phillips 66 during the planning and development of major capital projects by conducting environmental impact analyses, collecting key environmental data, and implementing mitigation and monitoring programs to reduce impacts and assure results. Phillips 66 promotes biodiversity and conservation at the national and local levels. They partner with national conservation organizations that activate and execute in the communities where their employees call home.  

Phillips 66 provides educational conservation materials to communities in which they operate and market products. Partnering with communities allows Phillips 66 to proactively address issues that are important to the people who live near their facilities. They also collaborate with environmental and conservation organizations on both the local and national level to promote biodiversity and environmental stewardship. From 2014 to 2018, Phillips 66 invested more than $6 billion in environmental protection projects and sustaining capital. 

Conservation Programs

Phillips 66 values its long-standing partnerships with many national conservation organizations, including the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, Ducks Unlimited, and the Wildlife Habitat Council, all of which are integral to the company’s conservation strategy. 

Through the Wildlife Habitat Council (WHC), Phillips 66 certified a native habitat landscaping guide for their service station operators in California. WHC then helped them scale the program to 18 states plus the United Kingdom. The guides are publicly available on the sustainability section of the Phillips 66 website. WHC assisted interested peer companies to collaborate by economically branding and furthering the expansion of native habitat conservation materials. 

Phillips 66 summer engineering interns used the program materials to design a flood control rain garden in the community near the Wood River Refinery.  This initiative won the 2018 environmental stewardship award from the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission. As WHC has stated in the past, every act of conservation matters but does not have to be expensive. Costs with the native habitat initiative have been less than a dollar per employee.  

In 2019, Phillips 66 worked with native plant societies in Texas, Louisiana, Kansas and California to activate an education program, and Phillips 66 plans to expand efforts with additional native habitat societies in 2020. A brief description of the pilot program is included in the Phillips 66 sustainability report (pg. 44).

Biodiversity & Habitat Stewardship

Conservation efforts in Texas during 2019 include supporting grassland restoration and wildlife conservation through the Oaks and Prairies Joint Venture as part of Texan by Nature’s Conservation Wrangler program. With this donation, Phillips 66 enabled Oaks and Prairies Joint Venture to positively impact at least 1,880 acres of grassland habitat and 76 breeding pairs of Bobwhite Quail.

Phillips 66 also works with national partners such as Ducks Unlimited and the National Fish & Wildlife Foundation to conserve ecologically-important habitats and enhance biodiversity. Phillips 66 contributed $400,000 to the Ducks Unlimited Gulf Coast Initiative in support of conservation efforts in the wetlands of Texas and Louisiana—North America’s most significant waterfowl wintering grounds. Contributions in 2017 helped preserve more than 21,000 acres of habitat.

Phillips 66 supports Texas parks with Texas Parks & Wildlife through the following projects:

• Brazos Bend State Park: updating outdoor interpretative and orientation signage 
• Goose Island State Park: constructing new trails at the Big Tree Natural Area section of the park, accompanying interpretive and wayfinding signage for the trail
• Mustang Island State Park: purchasing an off-highway vehicle capable of traversing this terrain to perform law enforcement patrols, ensure visitor safety and swift emergency response
• Sea Rim State Park: rebuilding 1,000 feet of the Gambusia Nature Trail Boardwalk for education and recreation 

Learn more about environmental stewardship and conservation initiatives in the Phillips 66 2019 Sustainability Report.

Energy Efficiency, Waste Management & Recycling

Outside of land and habitat stewardship, Phillips 66 strives to lower environmental impact operationally by setting a non-regulatory standard for oil and gas businesses throughout Texas and beyond. Since 2012, air emissions from Phillips 66’s refining business have decreased 25%. Many of the Phillips 66 U.S. refineries have an Energy Star® Certification, which recognizes voluntary efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through energy efficiency.

In 2018, Phillips 66 piloted a project in partnership with STC Industrial to sustainably manage hazardous refinery waste from tank cleaning projects. When refinery tanks are cleaned, Phillips 66 must responsibly manage the residual product. More than 10 million pounds of waste from their sites in California, Louisiana, and Texas were moved to locations where it could be used as an alternative fuel source for kilns in the cement manufacturing industry. 

Cement manufacturing requires mixing limestone with clay or shale and then heating it to 2700°F. Recycled waste from the refinery tank cleanings can be used to fire the cement kilns. This method leaves no ash, meaning nothing goes to a landfill. Moreover, the process yields measurable results: in just one year the pilot project kept more than 2,500 tons of waste out of landfills and provided more than 866,000 gallons of waste-derived fuel for the kilns. 

In addition to recycled and repurposed waste, Phillips 66 also tracks every raw material used in their manufacturing process at more than 85% of their lubricant plants. In 2018, they recycled nearly 1,100 tons of scrap material, including cardboard, bottles, cans, pallets and shrink wrap. 

Community Giving and Volunteer Efforts

In 2018, Phillips 66 contributed $27 million to organizations promoting education and literacy, environmental sustainability, safety and preparedness, and civic enrichment.  The company encourages employees to volunteer their time to causes personally important to them. 

2018 was a record year for the volunteer program. Phillips 66 employees spent 78,000 hours volunteering in their communities.  Employees gave their time at literacy summer camps, building homes with Habitat for Humanity, assembling equipment for local fire departments, planting trees at local schools, doing household chores for people who are not physically able, picking up trash along roads and beaches, and much more.

Building a Sustainable Future

Phillips 66 believes conservation work should be visible and substantive over time. Looking ahead, Phillips 66 believes that local implementation, employee volunteerism opportunities and community access are important to creating progress. 

Along with productive conservation efforts,  Phillips 66 takes steps to help progress mutual respect and mutually-beneficial sustainability strategies for the planet and its business. The company invests in the preservation and protection of natural resources out of respect for and value of the role natural resources play in our lives. Phillips 66 foresees continued partnerships with environmental organizations that enable effective conservation of habitats and promote biodiversity.

Texan-Led Conservation

Texas is the hub of energy production, manufacturing and distribution to the world.  Nearly 4,000 employees, 25% of Phillips 66, live across the state of Texas, providing energy and improving lives.  

Their international headquarters is based in Houston and Phillips 66 has significant operations there. Other operations around the state include refineries and fractionators in Borger, Sweeny, Mont Belvieu, and Beaumont; storage terminals in Alvin, Amarillo, Beaumont, Mont Belvieu, Odessa, Pasadena, and Wichita Falls; and thousands of miles of pipeline and retail stations throughout Texas. Two significant joint ventures, Chevron Phillips Chemical Company and DCP Midstream, have offices and manufacturing facilities in Texas as well.