Ken Richter came to Pilko with 49 years of experience with Chevron and Chevron Phillips Chemical Company, including petroleum refining and petrochemicals,  both domestic and internationally. Ken retired from Chevron Phillips Chemical Company in 2017.  His global and leadership experience provides the knowledge and perspective needed to facilitate management teams to get control of risk before it leads to catastrophe.

He has manufacturing expertise and leadership experience in refinery and chemical process plant operations, process design, construction, organization design, health, safety & environmental management and business processes. Ken provided leadership and operating expertise on several major capital projects during his career. This experience included major refinery capital projects, operations management consulting in Argentina as well as two greenfield petrochemical major capital projects in the Middle East. He worked 12 years in the Middle East and served as the Benzene Project and Ethylene/Polymer Project Operations Manager for the Saudi Chemical Company in Jubail, Saudi Arabia. In addition, Ken served as Plant Manager for the Qatar Chemical Company green field Ethylene/Polymers facility from the design phase through construction and startup. As Operations Manager and Plant Manager for both Middle East mega projects he served in operating, technical and leadership roles through the design, construction and start-up phases of operation. Ken provided leadership to build the organizations and create the foundation and culture of incident and injury-free operations. In the U.S. Ken has refinery operations experience in both daily operations as well as major capital projects including crude, cracking and hydro-processing facilities.  Throughout his career, his daily responsibilities included improving personnel and process safety, developing and providing leadership for a team culture, developing and meeting operating cost challenges, major capital project operations planning and inspiring teams to work injury and incident- free.

At Chevron Phillips Chemical Company, Ken held several professional titles, including Corporate Project Team Operations Consultant, Operations Manager for Saudi Polymer Company in Jubail, Manager Refinery Chemicals Operations at Chevron Pascagoula Refinery, Plant Manager at Qatar Chemical Company in Doha, Qatar and Operations Manager at Saudi Chevron Petrochemical in Jubail, Saudi Arabia among others.

Ken is based in the U.S.