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Conoco

Conoco (/ˈkɒnək/ KON-ə-koh), formerly known as Continental Oil, is an American petroleum brand that has been operating under the ownership of the Phillips 66 Company since 2012. It is headquartered in the Westchase neighborhood of Houston, Texas. The brand is one of the several successors of the original Standard Oil Company ("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 was founded in Ogden, Utah, by Isaac Elder Blake in November 1875 as the Continental Oil and Transportation Company. It was acquired in 1884 by the increasingly dominant Standard Oil Company. Marland Oil Company was founded in 1921 by E. W. Marland (1874–1941), oilman, businessman and later politician of Pennsylvania and later Oklahoma. Eighteen years after Standard Oil's federal court-ordered dissolution of 1911, Marland Oil acquired Continental Oil, and moved 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 name and rebranded itself into the more nationally known Continental and Conoco nameplates. It eventually became one of the largest oil companies in the United States, and further expanded its operations globally during the 1970s.

Like other oil companies, Conoco's operations were negatively impacted by the 1970s energy crisis, which was caused in part by the 1973–1974 Arab oil embargo. 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 Corporation and Seagram attempted to acquire the company. The DuPont company, of Wilmington, Delaware was brought in as a so-called "white knight" by Ralph Bailey (the CEO of Conoco at the time). DuPont defended Conoco against the takeover. 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 Oil’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. DuPont sold 30% of its interest that year and the remaining 70% the following year in July 1999, completing the corporate separation.

The company operatee its own oil refineries until 2002 when it was merged with the Phillips Petroleum Company to form ConocoPhillips. A decade later, ConocoPhillips divested its downstream operations that consisted of its gas stations refueling operations under the brands of Conoco, Phillips 66, and 76. The downstream operations of ConocoPhillips were spun off under a separate company known as the Phillips 66 Company.

The "Continental Oil and Transportation Company" was founded by Isaac Elder Blake in November 1875 in Ogden, Utah. The company distributed the recently discovered mineral resources of petroleum and oil which had been found in August 1859 by Edwin Drake (1819–1880), in a well drilled at Oil Creek, near Titusville, (Crawford County), in the far northwestern corner of Pennsylvania). It also distrbuted refined by-products of kerosene, benzene, and other products in the Western United States. Continental Oil Company was acquired by Standard Oil Company in 1884, and was spun off during the Standard Oil divestiture in 1911.

Marland Oil Company, which had been founded by exploration pioneer E. W. Marland, acquired the Continental Oil Company in 1929, and the main office was moved to Ponca City, Oklahoma. 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 capsule logo was adopted.

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