The Crittenden Automotive Library

American Oil Company

American Oil Company
Gasoline Station Chain

Topic Navigation
Wikipedia: Amoco Page Sections History Multimedia

An oil company founded in 1910 in Baltimore, Maryland. Incorporated in 1922 by Louis Blaustein and his son Jacob. Amoco was originally a brand of gasoline, then the brand of service stations, and in 1985 it became the official name of the company. Amoco merged with merged with British Petroleum in December 1998, forming the current BP Amoco company.

History

The following section is an excerpt from Wikipedia's Amoco page on 17 November 2016, text available via the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

When the Standard Oil Trust was broken up in 1911, Indiana Standard was assigned marketing territory covering most of the Midwestern United States, including Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri. It had the exclusive rights to use the Standard name in the region. It purchased the Dixie Oil Company of Louisiana in 1919 and began investing in other oil companies outside its Standard marketing territory.

Blaustein incorporated his business as the American Oil Co. in 1922. In 1923 the Blausteins sold a half interest in American Oil to the Pan American Petroleum & Transport company in exchange for a guaranteed supply of oil. Before this deal, Amoco was forced to depend on Standard Oil of New Jersey, a competitor, for its supplies. Standard Oil of Indiana acquired Pan American in 1925, beginning John D. Rockefeller's association with the Amoco name.

In the 1920s and 1930s Indiana Standard opened up dozens more refining and oil-drilling facilities. Combined with a new oil-refining process, Indiana Standard created its exploration and production business, Stanolind, in 1931. In the following years, a period of intense exploration and search for oil-rich fields ensued; the company drilled over 1000 wells in 1937 alone.

Lead-free gasoline

While most oil companies were switching to leaded gasolines en masse during the mid-to-late 1920s, American Oil chose to continue marketing its premium-grade "Amoco-Gas" (later Amoco Super-Premium) as a lead-free gasoline by using aromatics rather than tetraethyllead to increase octane levels, decades before the environmental movement of the early 1970s led to more stringent auto-emission controls which ultimately mandated the universal phase out of leaded gasoline. The "Amoco" lead-free gasoline was sold at American's stations in the eastern and southern U.S. alongside American Regular gasoline, which was a leaded fuel. Lead-free Amoco was introduced in the Indiana Standard marketing area in 1970. The Red Crown Regular and White Crown Premium (later Gold Crown Super Premium) gasolines marketed by parent company Standard Oil (Indiana) in its prime marketing area in the Midwest before 1961 also contained lead.

Post-war

By 1952, Standard Oil of Indiana was ranked as the largest domestic oil company. It had 12 refineries in the United States, marketed its products in 41 states, owned 12,000 miles (19,000 km) of crude oil pipelines, 10,000 miles (16,000 km) of trunk lines, and 1,700 miles (2,700 km) of product pipelines.

In 1956, the Pan-Am stations in the southeastern U.S. were rebranded as Amoco stations.

In 1961, Indiana Standard reorganized its marketing giving its American Oil Company unit responsibility for its retail operations nationwide under the Standard name inside the Indiana Standard marketing area (Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Wisconsin and Wyoming) and under the American name outside that region. Both brands shared the same redesigned torch and oval logo for easy identification nationwide. The Utoco name used in Indiana Standard's southwestern region was replaced by the American name. The Amoco name continued to be used outside the U.S. and as a brand on certain American Oil products.

Soon after, the company began to expand. With an exploration office in Canada, Indiana Standard was now an international gas company. Indiana Standard created several new plants and claimed various new oil fields in this time period, as the company prospered in the post-war boom. By 1971, all the divisions of Indiana Standard bore the Amoco name including American Oil which was renamed Amoco Oil with American stations renamed Amoco stations. By 1975, Amoco began phasing in the Amoco name in the old Indiana Standard sales territory. Standard Oil Company (Indiana) was officially renamed Amoco Corporation in 1985. Carlin's Amoco Station was built at Roanoke, Virginia about 1947; it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2012

Multimedia

1950's
From the Taylor Hardwick collection.
This film is available courtesy of the Prelinger Archives (public domain).
Download [American Oil Company Commercial] from The Internet Archive - 28.5MB - 1:00