ARCO

Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO)

Type	Private (subsidiary of Marathon)
Industry	Oil & Gas Extraction
Founded	1966 (1966)
Headquarters	La Palma, California, U.S.
Number of locations	1,200
Area served	United States Mexico
Key people	Robert Orville Anderson, founder Gregory J. Goff, CEO of Andeavor
Parent	BP (2000–2013) Andeavor (2013–2018) Marathon Petroleum (2018–present)
Website	ARCO.com

An ARCO filling station off Slauson Avenue in Los Angeles, California

Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO, pronounced ar-kouh) is an American oil company with operations in the United States, Indonesia, the North Sea, the South China Sea, and Mexico.^[1] It has more than 1,300 gas stations in the western part of the United States,^[2] and recently (as of 2017) five gas stations at northwestern Mexico.^[3][4] ARCO was formed by the merger of East Coast–based Atlantic Refining and California-based Richfield Oil Corporation in 1966. A merger in 1969 brought in Sinclair Oil Corporation.^[1] It became a subsidiary of UK-based BP plc in 2000 through its BP West Coast Products LLC (BPWCP) affiliate.^[5] On August 13, 2012, it was announced^[6] that Tesoro would purchase ARCO and its refinery for $2.5 billion. However, the deal came under fire due to increasing fuel prices. Many activists urged state and federal regulators to block the sale due to concerns that it would reduce competition and could lead to higher fuel prices at ARCO stations (ARCO stations make up more than half of all stations with the lowest fuel prices in California).^[7] On June 3, 2013,^[8] BP sold ARCO and the Carson Refinery to Tesoro for $2.5 billion. BP sold its Southern California terminals (Vinvale, Colton, San Diego, Hathaway, and Hynes) to Tesoro Logistics LP, including the Carson Storage Facility. BP will continue to own the ampm brand and sell it to Tesoro for Southern California, Arizona, and Nevada. BP exclusively licensed the ARCO rights from Tesoro for Northern California, Oregon, and Washington.

ARCO is known for its low-priced gasoline compared to other national brands, mainly due to an early 1980s decision to emphasize cost cutting (cash/debit-only policy) and alternative sources of income (ampm). ARCO is headquartered in La Palma, California.^[9][10] Tesoro was renamed Andeavor in 2017.

History

• The Atlantic Petroleum Storage Company's heritage dates back to 1866. It became part of the Standard Oil trust in 1874, but achieved independence again when Standard Oil was broken up in 1911.
• In 1915, Atlantic opens its first gas station on Baum Boulevard in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
• In 1917, First Richfield Oil Company of California gas station at Slauson and Central Avenues in Los Angeles, California. Richfield Oil Company of California logo is an Eagle trademark.
• The Atlantic Refining Company was headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
• In 1921, Sinclair Oil Company opens first modern service station in Chicago called "Greasing Palace No. 1". Sinclair gets into trouble with Teapot Dome scandal.
• In 1966, Atlantic merges with the Richfield Oil Company of California. The first CEO was Robert Orville Anderson. The new company boasts a new trademark, a red diamond shape called the ARCO Spark designed by Bauhaus artist, designer, and architect Herbert Bayer.
• Commercial oil exploration started in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, in the 1960s and the Prudhoe Bay Oil Field, North America's largest oil field, was discovered on March 12, 1968, by Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO) and Exxon with the well Prudhoe Bay State #1. Key employees with ARCO Alaska were Marvin Mangus John M. Sweet, and William D. Leake, chief project engineer for the Alaska pipeline. The Richfield Oil Company of California had purchased the drilling rights to the land where the discovery well was located. British Petroleum had drilling rights near the discovery well.
• ARCO acquired Sinclair Oil Corporation in 1969, but later divested certain Sinclair assets during the mid-1970s, resulting in Sinclair returning as a private company.
• In 1978, ARCO opened the first of its AMPM convenience stores in Southern California.

At one time, ARCO had its headquarters in the City National Plaza complex in Downtown Los Angeles^[11]

Presence in Southwest U.S.

ARCO once had a presence in the Southwestern U.S.—a stretch of Texas State Highway 225 east of Loop 610 in Houston, Texas, had an oil tank farm once painted with the ARCO logo. Lyondell-Citgo would rebrand the oil tanks in the 1980s. ARCO's global corporate headquarters were in the ARCO Plaza in Los Angeles at the corner of 5th and Flower Streets, the site of Richfield's former headquarters. ARCO's Oil & Gas division headquarters were in downtown Dallas, Texas. The headquarters' building was a 46-story office building designed by architect I.M. Pei, the ARCO Tower. ARCO closed the Dallas office and sold the building in the mid-1980s. Today, ARCO operates about 1,100 stations in five Western states: California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, and Arizona.^[12]

Merger

ARCO merged with Anaconda Copper Mining Company of Montana in 1977. Anaconda's holdings included the Berkeley Pit and the Anaconda, Montana Smelter. ARCO founder Robert Orville Anderson stated "he hoped Anaconda's resources and expertise would help him launch a major shale-oil venture, but that the world oil glut and the declining price of petroleum made shale oil moot".^[13] The purchase turned out to be a regrettable decision for ARCO. A lack of experience with hard-rock mining and a sudden drop in the price of copper to below seventy cents a pound, the lowest in years, caused ARCO to suspend all operations in Butte, Montana. By 1983, only six years after acquiring rights to the "Richest Hill on Earth", the Berkeley Pit was completely idle. By 1986, some ARCO properties were sold to billionaire industrialist Dennis Washington, whose company, Montana Resources, operates a much smaller open-pit mine east of the defunct Berkeley Pit.

Acquisition

In 1985, the Atlantic brand was spun off for ARCO's East Coast stations as Atlantic Petroleum. Atlantic was acquired by Dutch trader John Deuss, who later sold it in 1988 to Sunoco. The ARCO brand is now used on the West Coast. ARCO specializes in discount gas by removing many frills, among them forcing prepayment for fuel, not accepting credit cards at most locations, and charging 35 cents^[14] for the use of debit cards. In most locations, it is co-branded with ampm convenience stores, also a division of BP West Coast (ARCO introduced the AmPm concept in 1979).

1990s

ARCO financed EASTLUND in the beginning of the 1990s for High Auroral Active Research Project (HAARP Project). In March 1997, ARCO also leased almost all the gas stations of the (now) Santa Fe Springs, California based independent Thrifty Oil^[15] group of 250 stations found throughout California^[16] after a damaging price war which the independent Thrifty was unable to win.^[17]

2000s

On April 18, 2000, ARCO was purchased by BP America and completely merged into BP operations. There were two exceptions due to FTC requirements: ARCO Alaska was sold by BP to Phillips Petroleum, and ARCO Pipe Line Company was acquired by TEPPCO, a subsidiary of Duke Energy. ARCO as a subsidiary no longer exists.

Over the course of 2004 and 2005, ARCO signs have been replaced. New signs still have the ARCO spark, but BP's Helios (BP's new white, yellow, and green "sunburst" mark named after the Greek Sun god, replacing the old British Petroleum shield mark)^[18][19] is also located on the sign. A new tagline "ARCO—part of BP" has also appeared on some signs and advertisements. ARCO was known for sponsoring the ARCO Arena (now Sleep Train Arena) in Sacramento, California,^[20] with a license fee of $750,000/year through 2007.^[21]

Superfund site

ARCO is the responsible party (by its ownership of Anaconda Copper at the time operations were terminated) for America's largest Superfund site—a site that takes in the towns of Butte and Anaconda, and 120 miles (190 km) of the Clark Fork River including Milltown Dam. The region's water and soil were polluted by a century of mining and smelting. Chemicals of concern include many heavy metals and arsenic. On 7 February 2008, the United States Environmental Protection Agency announced that prolonged litigation with ARCO ended when ARCO agreed to pay $187 million to finance natural resource restoration activities.^[22] Anaconda still nominally exists, but only as a massive environmental liability for ARCO.

In the media

George Romero's 1978 film Dawn of the Dead features a zombie wearing a red baseball jersey that read "Bach's Arco Pitcairn".

The song "Storm", in Godspeed You Black Emperor's 2000 album Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven uses a field recording done at the Los Angeles Airport ARCO gas station.

Sacramento band CAKE recorded the song "Arco Arena", which was about the stadium in Sacramento that Arco had purchased naming rights to.

Legal issues

Atlantic Richfield Co and its parent BP America agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by about 700 current and former residents of Yerington, Nevada, who lived near the Anaconda mine built in 1941. Company paid in Nevada up to $19.5M for settlement. EPA tested in 2009 wells and found that 79% of the wells north of mine had dangerous levels of uranium and/or arsenic.^[23]

In September 2010, the staff of KCST-FM in Florence, Oregon noticed that the station's Emergency Alert System (EAS) equipment would repeatedly unmute as if receiving an incoming EAS message several times a week. During each event, which was relayed from KKNU in Springfield, the same commercial advertisement for ARCO/BP gasoline could be heard, along with the words "This test has been brought to you by ARCO". Further investigation by the primary station transmitting the commercial revealed that the spot had been produced using an audio clip of an actual EAS header which had been modified to lower the header's volume and presumably prevent it from triggering false positive alert reactions in EAS equipment. The spot was distributed nationally, and after it had once been identified as the source of the false EAS equipment trips, various stations around the country reported having had similar experiences. After a widespread notification by the Society of Broadcast Engineers was issued, ARCO's ad agency withdrew the commercial from airplay.^[24][25]

See also

• ARCO Arena (1985) and successor venue ARCO Arena (currently the Sleep Train Arena) in Sacramento, California
• Conoco-Phillips Building in Anchorage, Alaska, originally the ARCO Tower
• Harold Harby, employee of Richfield Oil and member of the Los Angeles City Council for all but one year from 1939 to 1957

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to ARCO (Atlantic Richfield Company).

• Official website
• Tesoro official website
• ARCO Alumni official website