 | |
| Industry | Petroleum |
|---|---|
| Founded | November 29, 1911 |
| Defunct | January 3, 1966 |
| Fate | Merged with Atlantic Petroleum |
| Successor | Atlantic Richfield Company |
| Headquarters | Richfield Tower, |
Richfield Oil Corporation was an American petroleum company based in California from 1911 to 1966. In 1966, it merged with Atlantic Refining Company to form the Atlantic Richfield Company (later renamed ARCO). [1]
The Richfield Oil Corporation was founded in 1911, [2] and opened its first automotive service station in Los Angeles in 1917. [3] After quick expansion, Richfield Oil Corp fell to the Great Depression and went into receivership in 1931. [4] [5]
Cities Service Company (now known as Citgo) offered one share of stock for every four Richfield's [6] and acquired a majority of the stock.
Consolidated Oil Corporation (in 1943 renamed Sinclair Oil Corp), in 1932, offered to buy Richfield Oil. [7] While this offer was not accepted, Harry Ford Sinclair, president of Consolidated Oil, continued to pursue Richfield Oil [8] and prevented Standard Oil of California (now known as Chevron) from taking over the company.
Consolidated Oil Corp, in 1935, bought Richfield's eastern United States operations. This maneuver removed Standard Oil of California's interest in Richfield Oil. The east coast gas stations would later be rebranded as Sinclair stations.
Richfield Oil Corp emerged from receivership in 1936, after Rio Grande controlled by Consolidated Oil Corp and Cities Service Company agreed to a merger between Richfield Oil and Rio Grande. [9]
During World War II, two Richfield Oil tanks were bombarded by the Imperial Japanese Army on February 23, 1942, in an attack on the Ellwood oil field, which is west of the city of Santa Barbara in California. This attack by the Japanese submarine I-17 was the first attack on continental America during the war.
Richfield Oil sponsored Disneyland's model freeway Autopia from 1955 to 1970. [10]
The company merged with Atlantic Refining to form Atlantic Richfield Corp, later known as ARCO, in 1966. After spinning off Atlantic Refining to Sonoco, ARCO was purchased by BP plc in 2000. [11]
The construction of the Richfield Tower in Los Angeles. This 12 story black and gold Art Deco building was completed in 1929. This building served as Richfield's headquarters for many years. It was demolished in 1968.
Opening of the California Carson Oil Refinery in 1938. [12]
The Richfield Oil Corp was the first to discover commercial quantities of oil in the state of Alaska. This occurred in 1957 on the Kenai Peninsula. [13] [14] Richfield's success at Kenai helped push their leasing tracks at Prudhoe Bay, which later served to benefit ARCO. [15]
Atlantic Refining Company found itself needing more oil production. It first merged with Hondo Oil & Gas Company in 1962. Later, with former Hondo president Robert O. Anderson at the helm, Atlantic Refining continued its mergers and acquisitions. On a fishing trip with Richfield Oil Chairman Charles S. Jones, Robert O. Anderson, by then Chairman of Atlantic, arranged a merger to form the Atlantic Richfield Company. [16] The merger that would eventually become ARCO was completed in 1966. [17]
Charles S. Jones. From the Rio Grande to the Arctic: The Story of the Richfield Oil Corporation . University of Oklahoma Press, 1972.
Mobil Oil Corporation, now known as just Mobil, is a petroleum brand owned and operated by American oil and gas corporation ExxonMobil, formerly known as Exxon, which took its current name after it and Mobil merged in 1999.
Amoco is a brand of fuel stations operating in the United States and owned by British conglomerate BP since 1998. The Amoco Corporation was an American chemical and oil company, founded by Standard Oil Company in 1889 around a refinery in Whiting, Indiana, and was officially the Standard Oil Company of Indiana until 1985. In 1911, it became an independent corporation as part of the break-up of the Standard Oil trust. Incorporated in Indiana, it was headquartered in Chicago.
ARCO is a brand of gasoline stations owned by Marathon Petroleum. BP, which formerly owned the brand, uses it in Northern California, Oregon and Washington, while Marathon has rights for the rest of the United States and Mexico.
Tesoro Corporation, known briefly as Andeavor, was a Fortune 100 and a Fortune Global 500 company headquartered in San Antonio, Texas, with 2017 annual revenues of $35 billion, and over 14,000 employees worldwide. Based on 2017 revenue, the company ranked No. 90 in the 2018 Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by total revenue.
Sinclair Oil Corporation was an American petroleum corporation founded by Harry F. Sinclair on May 1, 1916. The Sinclair Oil and Refining Corporation amalgamated the assets of 11 small petroleum companies. Originally a New York corporation, Sinclair Oil reincorporated in Wyoming in 1976. The corporate logo featured the silhouette of a large green Brontosaurus dinosaur, based on the then-common idea that oil deposits beneath the earth came from the dead bodies of dinosaurs.
Tengizchevroil is a joint venture between Chevron, ExxonMobil, KazMunayGas and LukArco. The joint venture was formed in April 1993, when the government of Kazakhstan granted exclusive 40-year rights to Tengizchevroil LLP (TCO) to develop the Tengiz and Korolevskoye oil fields located in the north-eastern reaches of the Caspian Sea in Kazakhstan.
Marathon Petroleum Corporation is an American petroleum refining, marketing, and transportation company headquartered in Findlay, Ohio. The company was a wholly owned subsidiary of Marathon Oil until a corporate spin-off in 2011.
BP Canada was a Canadian petroleum company and subsidiary of British Petroleum that existed between 1955 and 1992. The name refers to a group of companies that engaged in various segments of the petroleum industry lifecycle. BP entered the Canadian market in October 1953, when it purchased a 23 percent stake in the Triad Oil Company. In 1955, BP formed a Canadian subsidiary, based in Montreal, called BP Canada Limited. The company began acquiring retail stations in Ontario and Quebec and in 1957 started construction on a refinery in Montreal. By the end of the 1950s BP Canada was a fully-integrated operation. In 1964, it acquired from Cities Service the Oakville Refinery, and then expanded its operations significantly in 1971 when it acquired Supertest Petroleum.
ampm is a convenience store chain with branches located in several U.S. states, including Arizona, California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington and in several countries such as Costa Rica and Brazil. The brand pulled out of the Eastern United States in 2012, but returned a decade later.
This is a chronology of the 1998 world oil market.
Atlantic Petroleum was an oil company in the Eastern United States headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and a direct descendant of the Standard Oil Trust. It was also one of the companies that merged with Richfield Oil Corporation to form the "AtlanticRichfield Co.", later known as ARCO.
Big Oil is a name sometimes used to describe the world's six or seven largest publicly traded and investor-owned oil and gas companies, also known as supermajors. The term, particularly in the United States, emphasizes their economic power and influence on politics. Big Oil is often associated with the fossil fuels lobby and also used to refer to the industry as a whole in a pejorative or derogatory manner.
Operating as Houston Refining, LP, LyondellBasell's Houston refinery is a 268,000-barrel-per-day (42,600 m3/d) refinery located on the Texas Gulf Coast in Houston that occupies 700 acres (2.8 km2) along the Houston Ship Channel. This refinery has been in operation since 1918, and it currently produces gasoline, lubricant base stock, propylene, and other associated materials. LyondellBasell has announced its intention to close this refinery by 2023, to help it reach its climate-change goals.
Tosco was an independent US based petroleum refining and marketing corporation based in Stamford, Connecticut. It was founded in 1955 in Santa Monica, California by A&P heir Huntington Hartford, and originally focused on extracting oil from oil shale and developing alternative energy sources.
The Cherry Point Refinery is an oil refinery near Bellingham, Washington, north of Seattle in the United States. Owned by BP, is the largest refinery in Washington state. It is located about seven miles (11 km) south of Blaine and eight miles (13 km) northwest of Ferndale, a few miles south of the Canada–US border, on the Strait of Georgia between Birch Bay and Lummi Bay.
Prudhoe Bay Oil Field is a large oil field on Alaska's North Slope. It is the largest oil field in North America, covering 213,543 acres (86,418 ha) and originally contained approximately 25 billion barrels (4.0×109 m3) of oil. The amount of recoverable oil in the field is more than double that of the next largest field in the United States by acreage (the East Texas Oil Field), while the largest by reserves is the Permian Basin (North America). The field was operated by BP; partners were ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips until August 2019; when BP sold all its Alaska assets to Hilcorp.
Robert Orville Anderson was an American businessman, art collector, and philanthropist who founded Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO). Anderson also supported several cultural organizations, from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to Harper's Magazine. He died December 2, 2007, at his home in Roswell, New Mexico.
Trainer Refinery is an oil refining facility located in Trainer, Pennsylvania. The facility is downstream from the Port of Chester and fifteen miles southwest of Philadelphia along the Delaware River. Stoney Creek is along its northern perimeter. The Trainer Refinery is owned by Monroe Energy, LLC, a subsidiary of Delta Air Lines. Monroe Energy acquired the facility in June 2012. Since that time, the refinery has focused on producing jet fuel, gasoline, diesel, and home heating oil.
Following the 1911 Supreme Court ruling that found Standard Oil was an illegal monopoly, the company was broken up into 39 different entities, divided primarily by region and activity. Many of these companies later became part of the Seven Sisters, which dominated global petroleum production in the 20th century, and became a majority of today's largest investor-owned oil companies, with most tracing their roots back to Standard Oil. Some descendants of Standard Oil were also given exclusive rights to the Standard Oil name.
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