Saturday, July 10, 2010

Gulf + Chevron + Texaco + Unocal = Chevron

In 1990, Everybody's Business: An Almanac recalled:

"Gulf used to lift anywhere from 1 million to 3 1/2 million barrels a day from Kuwait. So their daily profit was more than $1 million--from Kuwait alone...Gulf loaded its Kuwaiti oil on their tankers and sold it around the world. They became Japan's number 1 oil supplier."


And, according to the 2008 book by Antonia Juhasz, The Tyranny of Oil:

"...The largest merger [of the 1980s]...was...when Chevron purchased Gulf Oil for a record-breaking $13.3 billion in 1985...

"...It was the first merger between members of the exclusive Seven Sisters. It was also the largest merger in corporate history at the time, whereby the fourth-largest oil company in the nation was purchased by the fifth-largest company...Overnight the merger nearly doubled Chevron's worldwide crude reserves to about 4 billion barrels and increased its natural gas reserves by three-quarters. The merger also made Chevron the number one refiner and gasoline retailer in the United States, giving it thirty-four refineries and close to 30,000 service stations worldwide.

"Chevron added exploration and production projects where it was already operating, such as in the Gulf of Mexico, Canada, and the North Sea, as well as in West Africa, where Gulf's reserves suddenly advanced the company to a leading position. Chevron also acquired Gulf's other assets, including the Pittsburg & Midway Coal Mining Company and Warren Petroleum, a manufacturer and a seller of natural gas liquids, respectively. The FTC [Federal Trade Commission responsible for preventing monopolization of U.S. oil industry by a few giant transnational corporations] hardly blinked..."


In its 1989 Annual Report, Chevron reported:

"Chevron International Oil Company purchases most of the 750,000 barrels of oil that Chevron imports daily. As part of its strategy to diversify Chevron's sources of crude oil, the company now buys large volumes from Mexico and Iraq in addition to its long-established sources in Saudi Arabia..."


But, not surprisingly,as The Tyranny of Oil observed:

"...After more than one hundred years of `independence,' Texaco became part of the Standard Oil fold when its 2001 merger with Chevron was given the green light...

"...In the case of Chevron and Texaco, the two wanted to move more aggressively into `lucrative but highly risky deepwater offshore projects in West Africa, Brazil and the Caspian Sea.'..

"The merged company briefly went by the name ChevronTexaco, but reverted back to Chevron in 2005, the same year it purchased the Union Oil Company of California (Unocal) for $18.2 billion. The Unocal purchase brought ChevronTexaco 1.7 billion new barrels of crude, increasing its total reserves by about 15 percnt. Unocal had significant holdings in the U.S. Gulf Coast, in the Caspian Sea, and in Asia-Pacific.

"The mergers propelled Chevron to the powerful position of second-largest oil company in the United States, third-largest U.S. corporation, and seventh-largest company in the world..."

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