NEW YORK (Reuters) - Chevron Corp, the second-largest US oil company, said it planned to put several downstream operations up for sale, including its Pembroke refinery in the UK, and eliminate 2,000 jobs this year.

"Downstream market conditions are likely to be difficult for the next several years," Mike Wirth, executive vice president for Chevron's global downstream, said in a statement to its annual meeting with analysts in New York.

As it concentrates more on extracting oil and gas, Chevron is targeting one percent annual net production growth through 2014, before growing by between four percent and five percent in the three years after that.

John Watson, who took over as chief executive officer at the start of 2010, said its refineries were competitive, and it was the market conditions causing them problems.

Refiners across the industry have been hit hard as the global economic slowdown left them with too much capacity as demand slumped, hammering profit margins.

Wirth said he would continue to cut jobs into 2011 and expected after-tax severance charges of $150 million to $200 million in the first quarter of this year.

Chevron will further concentrate its refining and marketing — or downstream — portfolio in North America and Asia Pacific. It will solicit bids for certain operations in Europe, the Caribbean and Central America, and review operations in Hawaii and Africa, outside South Africa.

The Pembroke refinery in Wales has the capacity to refine about 210,000 barrels per day, and Wirth said Chevron had already received unsolicited expressions of interest in it.

Watson said the growth in oil and gas production in the middle of the coming decade would come as its portfolio shifts toward Asia and natural gas.

The company said it would approve or start up 25 upstream projects that cost at least $1 billion over the next three years, which Watson said would set the stage for growth.

Like other big oil companies, natural gas represents a growing part of Chevron's future production. Liquid reserves fell to 62 percent of the company's overall reserves in 2009, down from 66 percent a year before.