Norm Szydlowski

Norm Szydlowski was named President and Chief Executive Officer of Colonial Pipeline in January 2006. He champions the goals of operational excellence, safety and environmental stewardship at Colonial, enabling the company to provide its customers with efficient and effective operations that earn the public’s trust and a profit for Colonial’s owners.

Szydlowski comes to Colonial from a position as Senior Consultant to the Iraqi Ministry of Oil. At the Pentagon’s request, he led a team of experts from various countries in rebuilding and developing Iraq’s oil industry, achieving post-war production records despite continued sabotage.

That service followed 23 years at the Chevron Corporation, where Szydlowski began as a field engineer in 1981. A series of promotions advanced Szydlowski to a position managing Chevron’s Eastern U.S. asphalt business, including all refining, marketing, distribution and related commodities trading activities for the business. 

In 1995, he was named General Manager for Health, Environment and Safety, placing him in charge of policy and compliance for Chevron’s worldwide operations, including emergency response.

In 1997, Szydlowski was appointed General Manager, Operations for the Chevron Pipe Line Company, making him responsible for Chevron’s 10,000 miles of pipelines in North America. Under his leadership, the pipe line company reduced operating costs, improved asset utilization, implemented a program of operational excellence and launched a new, company-wide safety process.

Those accomplishments led to a 1999 promotion as General Manager of the Pascagoula Refinery, the largest and most complex wholly-owned refinery in the Chevron-Texaco system. There he set records three years in a row for best safety performance and for the best, three-year profit performance.

As Vice President of Refining from 2002-04, he was responsible for one of the largest refinery systems in the world. The 21 refineries represented approximately $7 billion in assets, and had a crude capacity of 2.25 million barrels per day. Szydlowski again achieved record safety and production performances as well as setting a new corporate record for energy efficiency.

He earned a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from General Motors Institute (now Kettering University) in Flint, Mich., and an MBA from Indiana University. He and his wife live in Alpharetta, Ga., and are the parents of one son.

Colonial Pipeline operates the largest-volume refined liquid petroleum products pipeline in the world. Founded in 1962 and privately owned by a consortium of oil and petroleum companies, Colonial’s 5,500-plus miles of underground interstate pipeline transports gasoline, kerosene, home heating oil, diesel and national defense fuels from refineries along the Gulf Coast to markets throughout the South and East Coast. More information about Colonial Pipeline is available at www.colpipe.com.