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The Galveston Bay refinery is in Texas City, Texas, on Galveston Bay, off the entrance to the Houston Ship Channel. In 2018. The refinery's origins trace back to 1934, when Pan American Petroleum and Transport Company established the original facility. Following a series of corporate consolidations through Standard Oil Company (Indiana), Amoco, and ultimately BP, Marathon Petroleum acquired the complex from BP in February 2013 for $2.4 billion. At the time of acquisition, the facility's crude processing capacity stood at 451,000 bpd.

A transformational expansion occurred in 2018 when Marathon merged its nearby 84,000-bpd Texas City refinery with the Galveston Bay facility to create an integrated refining complex. This integration, executed under the South Texas Asset Repositioning (STAR) program, represented a multi-year investment initiative originally budgeted at $1.5 billion (later revised to $2 billion). The STAR program, which officially reached completion in April 2023, added 40,000 bpd of crude processing capacity and 17,000 bpd of residual oil upgrading capability. Additional capacity expansions in 2023-2024 increased the refinery's crude distillation capacity by a further 38,000 bpcd, elevating it to its current 631,000 bpcd rating and securing its position as the nation's largest refinery.

The refinery can process a wide variety of crude oils into gasoline, distillates, natural gas liquids and petrochemicals, heavy fuel oil and propane.  Products are distributed via pipeline, barge, transport truck, rail and ocean tanker. The refinery has access to the export market and multiple options to sell refined products.

An on-site co-generation facility currently has 1,055 megawatts of electrical production capacity and can produce 4.3 million pounds of steam per hour. Approximately 45 percent of the power generated in 2018 was used at the refinery, with the remaining electricity being sold into the electricity grid.