Occidental Tower Corp history

Occidental Petroleum was founded in 1920 in California.

By July 1957 Hammer had become company president.

In 1961 while working with Occidental employees Richard Vaughn, Robert Teitsworth, and the Reids, Hammer took a chance on drilling the Lathrop field, near San Francisco.

By March 1964 Oxy's shares were trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

Hammer's skills as a negotiator were put to the test when the Libyan king was overthrown in a bloodless coup in 1969 and replaced by the Revolutionary Command Council, soon to be headed by Moammar Khadafi.

Hammer, in fact, considered his dealings as détente through trade, and he continued this notion through trade with the Chinese, with whom he began negotiating in 1979.

In 1981 Oxy moved beyond the energy and chemical fields to acquire Iowa Beef Packers (IBP), the largest meatpacker in the United States.

In late 1985 Hammer made another multi-billion dollar transaction, acquiring Midcon, the huge domestic natural-gas pipeline company, for $3 billion.

In July 1988, the company's Piper Alpha offshore oil platform exploded in Britain's North Sea, killing 167 people.

In June 1990, for example, Oxy was the only United States company in a four-country agreement to build a $7 billion petrochemical plant in the Soviet Union, the largest-ever joint Soviet-Western project.