Editing Texaco (section)

===1902–59: Beginnings===
[[File:Texas Company Building -- Houston.jpg|thumb|left|150px|Texas Company Building at 1111 Rusk St. in Houston. The company moved to larger facilities in 1989]]
[[File:Texas company galveston.jpg|thumb|"The Texas Company" [[Galveston, Texas|Galveston]] station, c. 1910-20]]
Texaco was founded in [[Beaumont, Texas]] as the "Texas Fuel Company" in 1902,<ref name=":0">{{Cite web |url=http://www.texaco.com/about.html |title=About |access-date=2018-04-09 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161015201958/http://www.texaco.com/about.html |archive-date=2016-10-15 |url-status=dead }}</ref> by [[Jim Hogg]], [[Joseph S. Cullinan]], [[John Warne Gates]], and [[Arnold Schlaet]]. On 1 May 1902, the Texas Company was formed from the assets of Texas Fuel assets, and additional [[market capitalization|capitalization]].<ref name=jl>{{cite book |last1=Linsley |first1=Judith |last2=Rienstrad |first2=Ellen |last3=Stiles |first3=Jo |title=Giant Under the Hill, A History of the Spindletop Oil Discovery at Beaumont, Texas in 1901 |date=2002 |publisher=Texas State Historical Association |location=Austin |isbn=9780876112366 |pages=188–195}}</ref> In 1905, it established an operation in [[Antwerp]], [[Belgium]], under the name Continental Petroleum Company, which it acquired control of in 1913.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=5GznAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA95 News of the Week: Union Oil of Delaware], ''Business Digest and Investment Weekly'', Volume 26, Issue 5, Arthur Fremont Rider (editor), 1920, p. 95 (retrieved August 2, 2010 from [[Google Books]])</ref> In 1915, Texaco moved to new 13 story offices on 1111 Rusk St., Houston, Texas. In 1928, Texaco became the first U.S. oil company to sell its gasoline nationwide under one single brand name in all of the then 48 states.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.texacobaltic.eu/en/texaco_history|title=History of Texaco &#124; Texaco engine oils and lubricants|website=www.texacobaltic.eu|access-date=2019-02-02|archive-date=2019-02-02|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190202171446/http://www.texacobaltic.eu/en/texaco_history|url-status=dead}}</ref>
[[File:Texaco Plakat.jpg|thumb|150px|TEXACO MOTOR OIL Poster (1928)]]
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In 1931, Texaco purchased the [[Indian Oil Company]], based in Illinois. This expanded Texaco's refining and marketing base in the Midwest and also gave Texaco the rights to Indian's [[Havoline]] motor oil, which became a Texaco product. The next year, Texaco introduced Fire Chief gasoline nationwide, a so-called "super-octane" motor fuel touted as meeting or exceeding government standards for gasoline for [[fire engine]]s and other emergency vehicles.<ref>[https://www.newspapers.com/clip/3318442/texaco_fire_chief_superoctane_gasoline/ "Depend on the Gasoline Fire Engines Depend On! Texaco Fire Chief Super-Octane Gasoline,"] ''Albany Democrat-Herald,'' May 27, 1932, pg. 4. (Ad.)</ref> It was promoted through a radio program over NBC hosted by [[Ed Wynn]], called the ''Texaco Fire Chief''.

In 1936, the Texas Corporation purchased the [[Barco oil concession]] in [[Colombia]], and formed a joint venture with Socony-Vacuum, now [[Mobil]], to develop it. Over the next three years the company engaged in a highly challenging project to drill wells and build a pipeline to the coast across mountains and then through uncharted swamps and jungles.<ref>{{cite magazine|pages=15ff
 |title=U.S. Business Opens the Great New Barco Oil Fields in Colombia|magazine=LIFE|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8kEEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA15|access-date=2013-07-24
 |date=1939-11-13|volume=7|issue=20|publisher=Time Inc|issn=0024-3019}}</ref> During this time, Texaco also illegally supplied the fascist [[Nationalist faction (Spanish Civil War)|Nationalist faction]] in the [[Spanish Civil War]] with a total {{convert|3500000|oilbbl}} of oil.<ref name= "Tierney2007">{{cite book|last=Tierney|first=Dominic|title=FDR and the Spanish Civil War: neutrality and commitment in the struggle that divided America|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LgkuIcArK6sC&pg=PA68|access-date=June 11, 2010|year=2007|publisher=Duke University Press|page=68|chapter=American Men, American Oil, American Arms|isbn=978-0822340768}}</ref> For these illegal sales to [[Francisco Franco]]'s fascist forces the company was fined $20,000 for violating the [[Neutrality Acts of the 1930s#Neutrality Act of 1937|Neutrality Act]] of 1937, although it continued to sell to Franco on credit until the end of the war.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Tierney |first1=Dominic |title=FDR and the Spanish Civil War: Neutrality and Commitment in the Struggle that Divided America |date=2007 |page=68 |publisher=Duke University Press}}</ref>

Also in 1936, marketing operations "East of Suez" (including Asia, East Africa, and Australasia) were placed into a joint venture with [[Standard Oil Company of California]] – Socal (now [[Chevron Corporation|Chevron]]) – under the brand name [[Caltex]], in exchange for Socal placing its [[Bahrain refinery]] and Arabian oilfields into the venture.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Yergin |first1=Daniel |title=The Prize, The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power |date=1991 |publisher=Touchstone |location=New York |isbn=9780671799328 |pages=299}}</ref>  The next year, Texaco commissioned industrial designer [[Walter Dorwin Teague]] to develop a modern service station design.

[[File:HFM 1939 Dodge Texaco tanker truck.jpg|thumb|left|1939 Texaco tanker truck by [[Dodge]] on display at the [[Henry Ford Museum]]]]
In 1938, Texaco introduced Sky Chief gasoline, a premium fuel developed from the ground up as a high-octane gasoline rather than just an ethylized regular product. In 1939, Texaco became one of the first oil companies to introduce a "Registered Rest Room" program to ensure that restroom facilities at all Texaco stations nationwide maintained a standard level of cleanliness to the motoring public.

After the onset of [[World War II]] in 1939, Texaco's CEO, [[Torkild Rieber]],  admirer of Hitler, hired pro-Nazi assistants who cabled Berlin "coded information about ships leaving New York for Britain and what their cargoes were." This espionage easily enabled Hitler to destroy the ships.<ref>[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/03/books/review/spain-in-our-hearts-by-adam-hochschild.html?_r=0/ "‘Spain in Our Hearts,’ by Adam Hochschild,"] Book Review by Michael Kazin, ''New York Times,'' March 29, 2016.</ref> In 1940, Rieber was forced to resign when his connections with [[Nazi Germany|German Nazism]], and his illegal supply of oil to the [[Francoist Spain|fascist forces]] during the [[Spanish Civil War]] were made public by the ''Herald Tribune'' through information produced by [[British Security Coordination]].<ref>{{cite book| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LgkuIcArK6sC&q=%22Thorkild%20Rieber%22%20texaco&pg=PA68| title=FDR and the Spanish Civil War: neutrality and commitment in the struggle that divided America| first=Dominic| last=Tierney| page=68| language=fr| isbn=978-0-8223-4076-8|year=2007| publisher=Duke University Press}}</ref><ref>{{cite book| url=https://archive.org/details/understandingpow00chom_0| title=Understanding Power| first=Noam| last=Chomsky| page=[https://archive.org/details/understandingpow00chom_0/page/159 159], Chapter 5 footnotes 61–64| isbn=978-1-5658-4703-3| year=2001| publisher=The New Press| url-access=registration}}</ref><ref>''The Secret History of British Intelligence in the Americas, 1940-1945'' pp56-57</ref> Life Magazine portrayed Rieber's resignation as unfair, advocating that he only  dined with [[Gerhard Alois Westrick|Westrick]], and lent him a company car.

[[File:Ame05198 04.jpg|thumb|Historic gasoline pumps in the [[Ambler's Texaco Gas Station]], [[Dwight, Illinois]]]]
During the war, Texaco ranked 93rd among United States corporations in the value of military production contracts.<ref>[[Whiz Kids (Department of Defense)|Peck, Merton J.]] & [[Frederic M. Scherer|Scherer, Frederic M.]] ''The Weapons Acquisition Process: An Economic Analysis'' (1962) [[Harvard Business School]] p.619</ref> In 1947, Caltex expanded to include Texaco's European marketing operations. That same year, Texaco merged its British operation with Trinidad Leaseholds under the name Regent; it gained full control of Regent in 1956,<ref>Report by the Monopolies Commission on the Supply of Petrol to Retailers in the United Kingdom, 1965</ref> but the Regent brand remained in use until 1968–9. In 1954, the company added the detergent additive Petrox to its "Sky Chief" gasoline, which was also souped up with higher octane to meet the antiknock needs of new cars with high-compression engines.

The next year, Texaco became the sole sponsor of [[The Huntley-Brinkley Report]] on NBC-TV. In 1959, the Texas Company changed its corporate name to Texaco, Inc. to better reflect the value of the Texaco brand name, which represented the biggest selling gasoline brand in the U.S. and only marketer selling gasoline under one brand name in all (by then) 50 states. It also acquired [[McColl-Frontenac Oil Company]] Ltd. of Canada and changes its name to Texaco Canada Limited.<ref name="autogenerated1">{{cite encyclopedia| url=https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/texaco-canada-inc| title=Texaco Canada Inc| encyclopedia=[[The Canadian Encyclopedia]]| date=March 7, 2014| access-date=April 10, 2018| archive-date=April 12, 2018| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180412001153/http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/en/article/texaco-canada-inc/| url-status=live}}</ref> Around this time, [[Paragon Oil]], a major fuel oil distribution company in the northeastern U.S., was acquired.