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Conoco ( ), formerly known as Continental Oil, is an American petroleum brand that is operating under the current ownership of the Phillips 66 Company since 2012 and is headquartered in the Westchase neighborhood of Houston, Texas. The brand is one of the several successors of the original Standard Oil ("oil trust" founded 1870 by John D. Rockefeller). Conoco was a subsidiary of Standard Oil from 1884 until 1911 when the Supreme Court of the United States, in an anti-trust legal case, ruled to decouple and break up the monopolized entity of Standard Oil.
Alongside Phillips 66 and 76, it operates as one of the major fuel brands of the Phillips 66 Company. Of those two brands, Conoco has a more dominant presence of gas refueling stations in Colorado, Texas, Montana, Missouri, and Oklahoma in the Midwestern United States, as well as a growing presence in Eastern Pennsylvania following taking over the retail contracts of several Gulf Oil locations there, while having a complete absence in states such as California to the west and Florida to the far southeast.
Continental Oil, originally based in Ogden, Utah was founded by Isaac Elder Blake in November 1875 as the Continental Oil and Transportation Company and was acquired in 1884 by the increasingly dominant Standard Oil Company. Eighteen years after Standard Oil's federal court-ordered dissolution of 1911, Marland Oil Company (founded in 1921 by E. W. Marland (1874–1941), oilman, businessman and later politician of Pennsylvania and later Oklahoma), would then acquire Continental Oil, moving its headquarters to Marland's home town of Ponca City, Oklahoma, in 1929.
As the Continental-Marland acquisition took effect, Marland Oil favorably phased out its own personal name and rebranded itself into the more nationally known titles of Continental and Conoco nameplates. As it eventually became one of the largest oil companies in the United States, Conoco further expanded its operations globally during the 1970s.
Similar to other oil companies during the 1970s energy crisis, initially caused by the 1973–1974 Arab oil embargo, Conoco's operations were negatively impacted and so in 1981, Conoco then the ninth-largest American oil company at the time, was embroiled in one of the most expensive corporate takeovers in U.S. history when the Mobil and Seagram attempted to acquire the company. The DuPont company, of Wilmington, Delaware who was conjured up by Ralph Bailey (the C.E.O. of Conoco at the time) was brought in and hired as a so-called "white knight" and would eventually emerge triumphant defending Conoco from the two vendors (corporate predators). DuPont's acquisition of Conoco at US$1.5 billion, made it the largest merger in U.S. history up to that time, surpassing that of the earlier Shell plc’s acquisition of the Belridge Oil Company at USD$3.5 billion dollars in 1979. Almost two decades later, in 1998, DuPont and Conoco announced their intentions to split which was commenced when DuPont sold 30% of its interest that year and the remaining 70% the following year in July 1999, officiating their corporate separation.
For many years, the company would operate its own oil refinery, until 2002 when it was merged with the Phillips Petroleum Company to form ConocoPhillips. A decade later, ConocoPhillips would then divest its downstream operations that consisted of its gas stations refueling operations under the brands of Conoco, Phillips 66, and 76. The divestiture would eventually commence and the spin-off that contained the downstream operations of ConocoPhillips went under a separate company known as the Phillips 66 Company.
The main office was later moved to Ponca City, Oklahoma, when in 1929, Marland Oil Company (founded by exploration pioneer E. W. Marland) acquired the Continental Oil Company. Marland Oil acquired the assets (subject to liabilities) of Continental Oil Company for a consideration of 2,317,266 shares of stock. The merged company took the more recognizable Continental name along with the Conoco brand. However, it adopted Marland's red triangle logo, which it retained until 1970, when the now-familiar capsule logo was adopted.
Dan Moran (1888–1948, led company 1928–1947), who succeeded Marland Oil Company founder E. W. Marland as president of Marland Oil in 1928, and subsequently became the first president of the merged Conoco. Moran then ran Conoco for twenty years, seeing the company through economic hardships and challenges of the Great Depression of the 1930s, and retiring in 1947, the year before he died. Conoco. "Our History 1910 – 1929" retrieved May 31, 2021. The company ran into early trouble when, shortly after acquisition, it was hit by the Great New York Stock Market Crash of October 1929. Conoco became a key supplier to the United States federal government and its world-wide deployment of the United States Armed Forces, along with several other Allied powers and their militaries during the Second World War (1939/1941-1945). (2026). 9780944641385, Greenwich Publishing Group, Inc.. ISBN 9780944641385
Under the leadership of successor Leonard F. McCollum, Conoco grew from a regional petroleum company to a global corporation in the post-war years after World War II of the late 1940s and into the 1950s. Another rough patch for the company came two decades later during the 1970s energy crisis, beginning with the 1973–1974 Arab oil embargo (resulting from the fourth Arab-Israeli conflict of the Yom Kippur War of October 1973), from which it did not fully recover until 1981, when Conoco became a subsidiary of former corporate rival DuPont company of Wilmington, Delaware.
In 1981, Dome Petroleum made a tender offer for 20% of Conoco. More than 50% of Conoco shares were tendered, evidence that shareholders were unhappy, and several companies made their own tender offers to take over Conoco. Cash rich and wanting to diversify, Seagram Company Ltd. engineered a takeover of Conoco. Although Seagram acquired a 32.2% stake in Conoco, DuPont was brought in as a "white knight" by the oil company and entered the bidding war. Mobil Corporation, the nation's second-largest oil company at the time, also joined the bid, and borrowed $5 billion to bid for Cocono. In the end, Seagram and Mobil lost out in the Conoco bidding war. In exchange for its stake in Conoco Inc, Seagram became a 24.3% owner (almost one-quarter of stock / interest) of the DuPont company. By 1995, Seagram was DuPont's largest single shareholder with four seats on the board of directors.
In 1998, DuPont sold 30% of Conoco," DuPont, Conoco Splitting." Ponca City News. Monday May 11, 1998. Retrieved on February 3, 2010. and in 1999, DuPont sold the remaining 70% stake it holds in Conoco Inc. When the independent Conoco went public in October 1998, under a retooled name, Continental Oil Company, it resulted in the largest IPO in history. In 2001, Conoco announced it has agreed to buy Gulf Canada for Canadian dollar6.7 billion dollars (Canadian), (equal to $4.3 billion, in the United States currency). Conoco merged with Phillips Petroleum in 2002 to form ConocoPhillips.
The headquarters of Conoco moved to Houston, in 1949. In 1965, the headquarters moved back East to Manhattan, in New York City. Seven years later in 1972, the headquarters moved northeast outside New York City to adjacent suburban Stamford, Connecticut; there in Stamford, Conoco occupied space in the three-story High Ridge Park commercial complex, remaining for a decade." Conoco Offices to Close." The New York Times at The Spokesman-Review. Sunday November 7, 1982. C10. Google News 48 of 67. Retrieved on February 3, 2010. In 1982, the DuPont company announced that Conoco's headquarters would move again from Stamford, Connecticut further south down the East Coast to Wilmington, Delaware, where DuPont's headquarters were located since its founding almost 222 years earlier in 1802." DU PONT TO MOVE CONOCO'S OFFICES." The Philadelphia Inquirer. November 6, 1982. D08. Retrieved on February 3, 2010. The move occurred in 1982. Edward G. Jefferson, the chairperson then of DuPont, said that the headquarters relocation was to bring the head workforces of DuPont and Conoco together. DuPont also announced that it was closing the Conoco offices in Stamford; the lease in the Stamford commercial offices complex was originally scheduled to expire in 1992.
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