Amoco Corporation

Amoco Corporation, former American oil company, one of the largest producers and marketers of petroleum products in the United States, which was bought in 1998 by the giant British Petroleum (BP PLC).

The Standard Oil Company (Indiana) was founded in 1889 by the Standard Oil trust (see Standard Oil Company and Trust) to direct the refining and marketing of oil in the Midwestern U.S. states. The company’s first refinery, outside Whiting, Indiana, produced fuel oil, kerosene, and other petroleum products. Beginning in the late 1890s, the company’s production of gasoline rapidly increased to meet the demands of the growing automotive market in the United States. About 1910 Standard Oil (Indiana) developed the first thermal cracking process, which became an important method for producing larger quantities of high-octane gasoline from petroleum.

In 1911 the U.S. Supreme Court dissolved the nationwide Standard Oil trust, and Standard Oil (Indiana) became independent, with its headquarters in Chicago. In the 1920s, in order to add production to its refining and marketing operations, Standard Oil (Indiana) acquired partial interests in companies that owned Midwestern oil fields and pipeline networks. It acquired the Sinclair pipeline and crude oil companies in 1930, and its purchases of oil fields in Texas helped it become one of the largest American oil companies in that decade, a status contested thereafter by only the Standard Oil Company (New Jersey), which later became Exxon Corporation. In the 1950s Standard Oil (Indiana) became active in oil exploration and production ventures in South America and the Middle East. Also in that decade it introduced new methods for producing chemical precursors of polyethylene terephthalate, which went on to become the premier material for polyester synthetic fibres and clear plastic beverage bottles and made Standard Oil (Indiana) into an important petrochemicals company. The gasoline it refined was marketed by thousands of service stations in the United States, and the company was also one of the largest producers of natural gas in the North American continent.

In 1961 most of the company’s U.S. operating activities were unified in the American Oil Company, for which Standard Oil (Indiana) served as a holding company. The byname Amoco was increasingly used as a brand and corporate name, and in 1985 the Standard Oil Company (Indiana) officially became the Amoco Corporation. By that time the company occupied a soaring stone-clad headquarters building that it had built (1970–72) near Chicago’s lakefront. In 1988 Amoco acquired Dome Petroleum, Ltd., which held large oil and natural gas reserves in Canada. By the end of the 20th century, American operations still accounted for more than half of Amoco’s total assets, though the company was also active in some 40 other countries in the areas of production, refining, and marketing.

In 1998 British Petroleum acquired Amoco for $43.2 billion. The merger propelled the combined company into the front ranks of the world oil industry. Starting in 2000, with the transformation of BP Amoco into BP PLC, the Amoco brand was replaced at service stations by the BP brand.