Unocal Corporation history

The Santa Paula plant was, in 1891, the site of the first petroleum research facility in the western United States.

Hardison, who had been gradually losing enthusiasm for the oil business, sold his interest in 1892 and left Union to engage in fruit growing.

In 1894 Bard resigned as president to protest an expansion of Union's refining capacity that Stewart initiated and that was approved by other directors.

Finally, he sold out his interest in Union in 1900 and began his political career.

Union Oil moved its headquarters to Los Angeles in 1901.

1905: Company completes the first successful cemented oil well.

As the situation worsened, creditors forced the elder Stewart to resign in 1914, and the board of directors elected his more conservative son to succeed him.

In 1917 it acquired Pinal-Dome Oil, a local company that added 20 service stations in Los Angeles and Orange County to its retail network.

In 1919, the Union Oil Company of Delaware was incorporated as a holding company for the Union Oil Company of California.

In 1920, Union Oil purchased the Central Petroleum Company from the Texas Company.

In 1922, the Union Oil Associates, Inc. was incorporated in California as a holding company to prevent control of the Union Oil Company of California passing to foreign interests after the merger of the Union Oil Company of Delaware with Royal Dutch Company.

The last great battle of his life over, Lyman Stewart died in 1923.

In 1928 it joined with Atlantic Refining to form Atlantic-Union Oil, a marketing venture in Australia and New Zealand.

In 1931 Union sold its interest in Pantepec Oil, which held leases for exploration in Venezuela.

1932: The 76 retail brand is introduced.

Press St Clair retired in 1938 and was succeeded by Reese Taylor, president of Consolidated Steel and a Union director.

In 1949 Union acquired Los Nietos Company, an oil and gas concern with holdings concentrated in California.

Injecting steam into abandoned California wells added 70 million barrels to its reserves, but by 1956 the company was strapped for both oil and cash.

As Gulf mulled over the possibilities, in 1959 Oklahoma-based Phillips Petroleum Company began acquiring Union stock and became Union's largest shareholder the next year with 15 percent.

Under Rubel, Union entered into merger talks with Atlantic Refining in 1963, but Atlantic called off the deal because it did not want Union to be the surviving company, losing as it would then its own identity in its East Coast markets.

Finally, in 1964, Rubel appointed Senior Vice-President Fred Hartley to take over as CEO.

In 1965 it acquired, through merger, the Pure Oil Company (operating mainly in Texas and the Gulf of Mexico), thereby doubling Union’s size.

1969: A Union Oil drilling platform off the coast of California near Santa Barbara leaks hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil into the water and onto the beaches.

In 1974 Union began building an experimental oil shale processing plant in Colorado.

Since joining Unocal in 1977, Williamson had spent his entire career on the exploration and production side, holding various management positions in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Thailand.

At the same time, Hartley's age—he turned 65 in 1980—and the lack of an heir apparent made Union the subject of takeover speculation on Wall Street.

The company was reorganized in 1983, and Union Oil Company of California became an operating subsidiary of a new Delaware-based holding company, Unocal Corporation.

Pickens began acquiring Unocal shares in late 1984, even as he was beginning a separate takeover bid for Phillips Petroleum, and eventually accumulated a 13.6 percent stake of Unocal.

Stegemeier thus was forced to sell additional assets, $527 million worth in 1993 alone.

Later that year, Unocal sold off its interest in Uno-Ven, the Midwest refiner and marketer. It was under Roger C. Beach, who took over as CEO in May 1994, that Unocal finally found the strong leadership needed to extricate itself—in dramatic fashion—from its troubled past.

The quintessential California oil company cut its California production roots in late 1996 when it sold the last of its Golden State fields.

In response Unocal announced in April 1998 that it would cut its 1998 capital-spending budget by about $175 million, or 11.5 percent.

Buoyed by surging oil and gas prices, Unocal posted its best results ever in 2000: $760 million in earnings on revenue of $8.91 billion.

In 2002 Unocal paid about $410 million in stock to take full control of Pure.