US oil refineries: how many, where, and the full list

What EIA counts

The count is the Energy Information Administration’s, from its annual survey (Form EIA-820, "Annual Refinery Report"). EIA’s glossary defines operable refineries as those that, at the beginning of a given year, were “in operation; not in operation and not under active repair, but capable of being placed into operation within 30 days; or not in operation, but under active repair that could be completed within 90 days.”

Operable is the sum of operating and idle. In Table 1 of the report, idle refineries are those “where distillation units were completely idle but not permanently shutdown on January 1, 2026.” Idle capacity is wider: it “includes capacity from refineries that are either completely or partially idle.” A refinery that has closed for good is in neither number.

EIA’s explanatory notes say the survey frame “included 130 respondents” as of January 1, 2026 and that, beginning in 2024, it covers “all non-refinery operators of distillation, reforming, cracking, coking, hydrotreating and similar processes.” In EIA’s file for January 1, 2026, 124 of the 130 sites report atmospheric crude oil distillation capacity. The other 6 report only downstream or production capacity and are marked “None reported” in the list below.

Capacity here is in barrels per calendar day, which EIA defines as the amount of input a distillation facility can process in a 24-hour period “under usual operating conditions.” Barrels per stream day, the other measure in the report, is the maximum “with no allowance for downtime.”

Refineries by year since 1982

EIA counted 301 operable refineries on January 1, 1982 and 130 on January 1, 2026. Over the same period operable crude distillation capacity went from 17,889,734 to 18,160,493 barrels per calendar day: fewer sites, slightly more capacity. The lowest count in the series is 129, on January 1 of 2021 and 2023. EIA has no value for 1996 or 1998, and the line breaks there.

Refineries by state

As of January 1, 2026, Texas had 34 operable refineries, Louisiana 15 and California 12; 30 states had at least one. PAD District 3, which includes Texas and Louisiana, held 58 of the 130 sites and 9,876,563 barrels per calendar day, 54.4% of US operable crude distillation capacity. Shares are computed from the capacities shown.

The ten largest US refineries

Ranked by operable atmospheric crude distillation capacity as of January 1, 2026. Company and site names are printed as EIA lists them; the corporation EIA assigns each company to is in the last column.

Closures and changes

Table 11 of the report lists two refineries shut down during 2025, neither of which is in the January 1, 2026 count: Houston Refining LP in Houston, Texas (263,776 barrels per calendar day, last operated February 2025) and Phillips 66 Company in Los Angeles, California (138,700 barrels per calendar day, last operated October 2025). EIA notes that both no longer process crude or unfinished oils. Table 12 reports no refinery sales in 2025.

One change since the report date: Valero said in its second-quarter 2026 results (July 30, 2026) that full idling of all processing units at its Benicia, California refinery was completed in April 2026. The site is still in the list below because the list is as of January 1, 2026, when EIA recorded 145,000 barrels per calendar day of operable capacity there. EIA lists June 2027 as the next release date for the report.

Full list of US refineries

All 130 sites in EIA’s file as of January 1, 2026, grouped by PAD District and state. To see where they are, EIA publishes refinery locations in its U.S. Energy Atlas petroleum refineries layer.

Questions

Newest-refinery answer: EIA, “When was the last refinery built in the United States?”

Related pages

• Crack spread: the margin between crude oil and the products refineries make.
• Refinery margins explained
• Why is diesel more expensive than gas?
• Diesel prices and heating oil price
• Refinery outage data research

Sources and method

The list, state totals and ranking are built from refcap26.xlsx, the by-refinery workbook of the EIA Refinery Capacity Report with data for January 1, 2026, released June 26, 2026. Capacity is the “Atmospheric Crude Distillation Capacity (barrels per calendar day)” rows: total operable, operating and idle. Yearly counts are EIA series 8_NA_8O0_NUS_C, 8_NA_8OO_NUS_C, 8_NA_8OI_NUS_C, 8_NA_8D0_NUS_4, retrieved November 13, 2026. Nothing is estimated or filled in. Published November 13, 2026.