Gulf
Canada Resources Limited was part of Gulf Oil
Limited, a partnership that originated in the United
States. When oil was discovered in Spindletop, Texas
in 1901, the Gulf Oil Corporation was created in
1907 to manage the well and began to deliver the
product to customers. This resulted in the world's
first drive-in service station in 1913. With the
advent of the First World War, Gulf's tanker fleet
went into service. Gulf Oil continued to grow and by
the early 1930s was a major US manufacturer of oil
products. In the 1940s, Gulf Oil expanded its
operations all over the world, which included
Canada. Right after the Second World War, Gulf
Canada bought 20 percent share in the British
American Oil Company. British American Oil (BA) was
an established Canadian oil company and was already
making acquisitions of various smaller companies in
Canada. In 1956, British America was celebrating its
fiftieth year of operation. The same year, BA bought the
Canadian branch of Gulf Oil for 8.3 million shares
of their own stock. This meant the majority of BA
was now owned by Gulf Oil, but the Canadian branch
of Gulf Oil was owned by BA.
The British American Oil Company
continued their domination of the Canadian market in
1964 by gaining 96 percent shares of Royalite Oil
Company Limited. BA became the umbrella company for
Anglo-American Exploration Limited (Purity 99),
Anglo-Canadian Oils Limited, the Royalite Oil
Company Limited, and Great West Distributors
Limited. The new company, Purity 99 Oil Company
Limited, took over the marketing functions for the
previous four companies, while Royalite coordinated
the service. The Gulf Oil Corporation had now
acquired 64.8 percent of the outstanding shares of
BA. In an effort to simplify the conglomerate, the
shareholders decided to have all of them under one
name: Gulf Canada Resources Limited. The company was
a publicly traded company and would explore,
develop, produce and market oil and natural gas
products. Its head office was based in Calgary,
Alberta.
As for the head office in
America, the decision was made to merge with
Standard Oil Company of California in 1984. At the
time it was the largest merger in United States
history, creating the Chevron Corporation. Gulf Oil
continued to exist as a brand name, while Standard
Oil (now called Chevron), later merged with Texaco
in 2001. The Canadian arm of Gulf remained
separately run. In January 1995, a group of
investors led by Torch Energy Investors Incorporated
acquired a 25 percent interest in Gulf Canada. By
1996, Gulf had participated in over 430 exploration
and development wells in western Canada.
Gulf Canada purchased Crestar and
was then taken over by Conoco in 2001. Jim Mulva
was the president of Conoco at the time. Conoco and
Phillips merged and that resulted in what is now
ConocoPhillips in 2002.
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