Richfield Oil Corporation was an American petroleum company based in California from 1905 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 1905, [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]
Richfield used both a realistic drawing and a stylized eagle as its symbol. This was often done in blue and yellow since blue and yellow were used as corporate colors.
Amoco was a brand of fuel stations operating in the United States and owned by 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. Originally part of the Standard Oil Company trust, it focused on producing gasoline for the new automobile market. In 1911, as part of the break-up of the Standard Oil trust, it became an independent corporation. Incorporated in Indiana, it was headquartered in Chicago, and formally adopted the name Amoco in 1985. Although the Amoco Corporation merged in 1998 into BP Amoco, the Amoco name was resurrected in 2017 as a brand that service station owners could choose to use when they purchased supplies from BP in selected areas of the United States.
ARCO is a brand of gasoline stations currently owned by Marathon Petroleum after BP sold its rights. BP commercializes the brand in Northern California, Oregon and Washington, while Marathon has rights for the rest of the United States and in 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 combined, amalgamated, the assets of 11 small petroleum companies. Originally a New York corporation, Sinclair Oil reincorporated in Wyoming in 1976. The corporation's logo featured the silhouette of a large green sauropod dinosaur, based on the then-common idea that oil deposits beneath the earth came from the dead bodies of dinosaurs. It was ranked on the list of largest privately owned American corporations. It owned and operated refineries, gas stations, hotels, a ski resort, and a cattle ranch.
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.
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 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. The last refinery to be built from the ground up in the U.S., 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.
Rincon Island is a small 2.3-acre artificial island located off Mussel Shoals in Ventura County, California on public land leased from the California State Lands Commission (CSLC). The island is situated approximately 3,000 feet (910 m) offshore in 55 feet (17 m) of water. The island was constructed in 1958 for the specific purpose of well drilling and oil and gas production. It is near the seaside communities of Mussel Shoals and La Conchita. The island is connected to the mainland by the Richfield Pier.
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.
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