ARCO Oil and Gas Company

ARCO Oil and Gas Company, Recovery Processes Research, Dallas, TX 75221 EDWARD W. MERRILL... 

Finally, financial support that made it possible for many foreign speakers to participate in the symposium is most gratefiilly acknowledged. Substantial contributions were made by the following Amoco Production Company, Arco Oil and Gas Company, Conoco Inc., Consolidation Coal Company, Mobil Research and Development Corporation, Unocal Corporation, and the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund. 

Financial support for this work was provided by Mobil Research and Development Corp., The Shell Development Co., Arco Oil and Gas Company, DOE Contract No. 19-85BC10845.000, The OU Energy Resources Institute, and The Oklahoma Mining and Minerals Resources Research Institute. 

Research and Technical Services, ARCO Oil and Gas Company, 2300 West Plano Parkway, Plano, TX 75075... 

Company, Arco Oil and Gas Company, Chevron Oil Field Research Company, Exxon Production Research Company, the Mobil Foundation, Shell Development Company, and the Standard Oil Company. Discussions with W.J. Benton on various aspects of the experimental techniques were most helpful. 

ARCO Oil and Gas Company, 234 Clarkson University, 108 E. I. du Pont de Nemours Company, 82 Illinois Institute of Technology, 136 National Institute for Petroleum and Energy Research, 405... 

Union Texas Petroleum was the last of the successor companies to Union Sulfur. Union Sulfur did not fold when its sulfur reserves were depleted. When the mine first closed, Union Sulfur prospered becoming an oil and gas exploration and production company. A major source of revenue to the company was the oil reserves found at Sulfur Mine. For a long time they kept the name Union Sulfur even though no longer in the sulfur business. The company name later changed several times-Union Sulfur and Oil in 1950 Union Oil and Gas in 1955 Union Texas Natural Gas in 1960-before becoming part of Allied Chemical in 1962. Allied Chemical spun off the division in 1992, through an 840 million IPO. Union Texas Petroleum had sales of one billion dollars when taken over by ARCO (now part of BP) in May 1998 for 3.3 billion. This is what had become of the dream of Herman Frasch. 

The Japanese company AOC operates on two shelf oil wells, Hafgy and Hut, and extracts about 300 thousand barrels per day. American Texaco developed three oil wells on the ground, Vaffa, Southern Favaris and Southern Um Gudayr, and extracts more than 200 thousand barrels per day. Texaco has signed a contract for its operation to last till 2010, and the American company plans to considerably increase the volume of production. In September of 1998, the Minister of Oil and Natural Resources of Saudi Arabia met with heads of a number of American oil companies (Chevron, Mobil, Texaco, Arco, Conoco, Phillips Petroleum). As a result of these negotiations, officials of Saudi Arabia have asked the companies to present their bids for possible joint projects in the gas and petrochemical sectors. 

Frasch s creative mind continued to work on petroleum. Between 1880 and 1900, thirty-four patents were filed by Standard Oil, half of which originated with Frasch. In 1895, another major invention was made by Frasch, the acidizing of an oil well to increase production, but this was not for Standard. Patents for the process were issued the following year (U.S. patent 556,651, 556,669). The acid reacted with the limestone rock, releasing carbon dioxide gas that opened up fissures in the rock. This process freed trapped oil pockets. Frasch had worked on this project with John W. Van Dyke (1849 - 1939). Frasch had known Van Dyke from the Solar Refinery years, where the latter had been the Superintendent of the revolutionary refinery for sour oil. On April 1, 1896, they assigned the patents to Van Dyke s company, the Oil Well Acid Treatment Company of Lima, Ohio. Van Dyke later led the Standard Oil spin-off company, the Atlantic Refining Company (later becoming part of ARCO and now part of BP). 

The third factor was the attendance of nine well-known carbon scientists from Europe and Japan in the 1984 symposium. Support for their attendance was obtained by a grant from The Petroleum Research Fund supplemented by contributions from the following industrial sponsors Aluminum Company of America, Ashland Petroleum Company, Arco Petroleum Products Company, Exxon Research Development Laboratories, GA Technologies Inc., Gulf Canada, Ltd., Gulf Research Development Company, Koppers Company, Inc., Mobil Oil Corporation, The Standard Oil Company (Ohio), and UOP, Inc. 

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