Tulsa was the oil capitol of the world.
Tulsa was the oil capitol of the world.
Tulsa was the oil capitol of the world.
For A time, Tulsa was known as
Oil capitol of planet Earth.
My Grandmother's Uncle
Founded a company that was the biggest
Fully integrated independent oil company
In America
"The Champlin Refining Company, which for many years held the distinction of being the nation's largest fully integrated oil company under private ownership, was based at Enid, Oklahoma. "
This I will ascertain. "Biggest Fully integrated independent oil company "
By size of production of products?
By size of profits? Revenue?
Number of employees? By independence.
Drilling oil wells. Holding leases on land for oil and gas wells. Producing natural gas. Producing oil. Refining oil, refining natural gas. Shipping oil, gasoline, gas, propane. Selling these products. Owning the stores that sell the oil, gasoline, heating oil. Making products from petroleum. Chemicals, derivatives. Plastic. Fertilizer. Acrylic, synthetic fibers. Paint. Thousands of retail stores. Multiple refineries. Thousands of employees. Pipelines that move oil. Storage tanks. The Enid First National Bank. The hardware store, the lumber store. I'm surely leaving out a few things. Trucks. Drilling equipment, derricks.
Railroad cars, who knows. Counties . Politicians.
My Grandmother's Uncle. My great grandfather's brother.
My mother's great uncle
My great-great Uncle
My JAG Uncle's great uncle.
My children's great-great-great Uncle
Champlin Oil, fully vertically integrated.
Barely a speck fell from the HH plate.
My mom's Aunt Ruth, my grandmother's sister, also a sister to my great uncle Jackson Champlin. He was Rear Admiral Champlin.
My grandmother was Dorothy Champlin.
My mom's mother was Dorothy.
My children's grandmother was Melanie, my mother.
She Taught.
***
"Enid holds the nickname of "Queen Wheat City" and "Wheat Capital" of Oklahoma and the United States for its immense grain storage capacity, and has
the third-largest grain storage capacity in the world. "
***
"with over 50 refineries operating in Cushing over its history. Today, Cushing is a major trading hub for crude oil
and a price settlement point for West Texas Intermediate
on the New York Mercantile Exchange and is known as the
"Pipeline Crossroads of the World."
"Cushing is a major crude oil hub within the United States and worldwide oil industry. It is a "vital transshipment point with many intersecting pipelines, storage facilities and easy access to refiners and suppliers."
Crude oil flows "inbound to Cushing from all directions and outbound through dozens of pipelines."
Crude oil tank farms around Cushing have over 90 million barrels of storage capacity."
***
"Cushing, Oklahoma, has a "working" oil storage capacity of approximately 76-77 million barrels,
which represents about 13-15% of
the total U.S. commercial crude oil storage capacity
according to Wikipedia and the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) "
***
"The Champlin Refining Company, which for many years held the distinction
of being the nation's largest fully integrated oil company under private ownership,
was based at Enid, Oklahoma. In 1916 Enid banker and entrepreneur Herbert Hiram Champlin (1868–1944) bought a lapsed oil lease on the Beggs farm in the fledgling Garber Field about fifteen miles east of Enid."
https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry?entry=CH001
" The Champlin Refining Company, which for many years held the distinction of being the nation's largest fully integrated oil company under private ownership, was based at Enid, Oklahoma.
In 1916 Enid banker and entrepreneur Herbert Hiram Champlin (1868–1944) bought a lapsed oil lease on the Beggs farm in the fledgling Garber Field about fifteen miles east of Enid. Champlin was reluctant to enter the new and highly speculative oil business, but at his wife's urging he agreed to invest twenty-five thousand dollars in the venture.
Champlin's first well came in on Christmas Day 1916 as a 250-barrel producer. The banker-turned-oilman drilled more wells on his 160-acre lease and in July 1917 purchased a small refinery on the outskirts of Enid, enlarged it to provide a market for the oil from his wells, and established
the Champlin Refining Company.
In order to provide a secure market for the refinery's growing output, He purchased a series of small oil companies that operated service stations.
By the mid-1920s Champlin Refining Company was marketing petroleum products in a six-state area centered on Oklahoma.
As the organization grew, it drilled more wells, built a large pipeline network, opened additional refineries, and greatly expanded the retail operation, all under the auspices of Champlin's private ownership.
When Herbert H. Champlin died on April 30, 1944, his company employed more than eight hundred people in Enid,
operated service stations and wholesale outlets in twenty midwestern states,
had a strong drilling and production presence in Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, and New Mexico, and continued a major refining operation
supported by one of the largest pipeline complexes in Oklahoma.
The company continued under family ownership until its stock went public in 1953.
In 1954 the Champlin Refining Company was bought by the Chicago Corporation of Chicago, Illinois.
This $55 million deal allowed the company to operate as a subsidiary until the Chicago Corporation changed its name to the Champlin Refining Company in 1956.
In 1964 the Celanese Corporation bought the company,
and at the beginning of 1970 Celanese sold Champlin to the Union Pacific Resources Company,
a division of the Union Pacific Corporation.
They operated the Champlin Refining Company in much the same manner as before. .
In 1984 they sold the entire retail operation to American Petrofina,
closed the Enid refinery, and ended the Champlin Refining Company's lengthy and
significant presence in Oklahoma."
___
"The property is currently owned by Enid businessman and attorney James Sears Bryant."
.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._H._Champlin_House
"Champlin Oil Company expanded to operate service stations and wholesale outlets
in twenty midwestern states
and drilling and production operations in Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, and New Mexico.
By Mr. Champlin's death in 1944, the company employed over 800 people in Enid."
"Following nine years of continued family ownership, the company went public in 1953.
It had several owners:
1954: Purchased by the Chicago Corporation for $55,000,000. This parent company changed its name to Champlin Refining Company in 1956.
1964: The Celanese Company purchased the company.
1970: The company was sold to Union Pacific Corporation and was kept as a wholly owned subsidiary.
1984: The Retail business of Champlin was purchased by American Petrofina, after Champlin closed the refinery.
around 1986, Union Pacific Corporation and Champlin Petroleum Company sold the Corpus Christi Refinery. (Citgo)
The Champlin trade name was part of the deal. Champlin's name was changed to Union Pacific Resources Company (UPRC).
During late 1990s, Union Pacific Corporation spun off the Union Pacific Resources Company.
2000: Anadarko Petroleum acquired Union Pacific Resources."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._H._Champlin_House
"$55,000,000 in 1954 is worth
approximately $616,389,024.33. today,
according to Measuring Worth. This calculation is based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which measures the average change over time in the prices paid by urban consumers for a basket of consumer goods and services, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. "
Or
"Accounting for inflation, $55,000,000 in 1954 is worth $645,289,033 in 2025"
$ Six Hundred forty five million, or so.
___
"to sustain long-range corporate growth he must form an integrated company encompassing
drilling and production,
storage and transportation,
and refining,
and retailing,
similar to the very successful model used by the Standard Oil Company "
"by 1926 the Marland Oil Company could boast of oil production in excess of 1.3 million barrels from operations in Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, and California."
They ousted him, put in their own management team, downsized the company, and absorbed it into the
Continental Oil Company,
or Conoco.
By mid-1929 all of the Marland red triangle signs had been painted over with Conoco emblems, and the Marland Oil Company was no more."
Ernest Whitworth Marland
(May 8, 1874 – October 3, 1941) was an American lawyer, oil businessman in Pennsylvania and later Oklahoma, and politician who was a United States Representative (congressman) and 10th Governor of Oklahoma.
He served in the United States House of Representatives (lower chamber of the Congress of the United States) from a district in northern Oklahoma, 1933 to 1935, and as the tenth Governor of Oklahoma from 1935 to 1939.
As a Democrat, he initiated a "Little Deal" in Oklahoma during the Great Depression of the 1930s, working to relieve the distress of unemployed people and the economic hardships affecting the state and nation-wide and to build infrastructure
as investment for the future. "
He first founded the 101 Ranch Oil Company. Marland was successful in reestablishing his fortune.
By 12 years later in 1920, it was estimated to be worth at $85,000,000
($85 million dollars - roughly $910,000,000 - $910 million dollars in modern 2024 U.S. dollars).
That year he founded the Marland Oil Company in Ponca City (it was incorporated in Delaware on October 8, 1920) and served as its president. In 1928, the Marland Oil Company was taken over in a hostile bid process
by famous Wall Street / New York City financier tycoon J. P. Morgan, Jr. and was merged with the Continental Oil and Transportation Company (CONOCO).
Marland's oil empire was destroyed and he was pushed out of the company leadership and replaced as President of Marland Oil by Dan Moran.
He lost all of his wealth for the second time.
He and William Skelly were instrumental in the founding of the Kansas-Oklahoma division of
the United States Oil and Gas Association, then known as "Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._W._Marland
"The predecessor organization, Mid-Continent Oil & Gas Association, was founded on October 13, 1917, after the United States entered World War I, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which called itself "The Oil Capital of the World".
At its creation, the association worked to provide petroleum to the Allied forces"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Oil_%26_Gas_Association
By 1918 Cities Service
companies operated seven oil refineries, five of which were in Oklahoma, and were active in nine Oklahoma oil fields. During the 1920s Cities Service located three of the five pools that comprised the Greater Seminole Oil Field, and
one of the company's subsidiaries, the Indian Territory Illuminating Oil Company, discovered
the Oklahoma City Oil Field in 1928.
Cities Service became a major American enterprise with operations across the nation and abroad "
"1968 Cities Service moved its headquarters to Tulsa.
It remained there until in 1982 it became a wholly owned subsidiary of the Occidental Petroleum Company.
Occidental absorbed all the Cities Service divisions except for refining and marketing,
which continued to operate under the name
Citgo, with headquarters at Houston, Texas.
Now under foreign ownership, Cities Service Oil Company played a major role in the social and economic fabric of Oklahoma during most of the twentieth century. It employed thousands"
___
"Incorporated at Bartlesville in 1917, the Phillips Petroleum Company was headquartered there for eighty-five years.
In 2002 Phillips, Oklahoma's then-largest company, and Conoco, Inc., merged to become ConocoPhillips
and relocated to Houston, Texas. This new, international, diversified energy firm is presently
the third-largest integrated energy company,
and the second largest refiner, in the United States."
***.
"In September 1905 they drilled their first gusher, the Anna Anderson Number One, located northwest of Dewey in the Cherokee Nation, Indian Territory,
on land leased from an eight-year-old Delaware Indian girl. "
"Wham-O Manufacturing used Marlex in the production of the Hula-Hoop, which became popular in that decade."
"A major legal case, Phillips Petroleum v. Wisconsin, reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954.
The Court ruled in this case that the Federal Power Commission (FPC) had the authority to regulate
the wellhead price of
natural gas produced for the interstate market.
This decision had far-reaching implications for that industry."
"Phillips continued to extend its operations internationally and explored for petroleum in
Venezuela, Canada, and Columbia and later in the Middle East.
In Alaska it participated in an exploration and production project at Cook Inlet in 1962 and also at Prudhoe Bay on the North Slope. "
During the 1980s a tumultuous merger and acquisition movement buffeted the oil and gas industry.
Groups led by T. Boone Pickens, Jr., and Carl C. Icahn sought to acquire the company, but it retained its independence."
https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry?entry=PH004
"For twenty-two years between 1900 and 1935 Oklahoma ranked first among the Mid-Continent states in oil production and for nine additional years ranked second.
During that period the state produced 906,012,375 barrels of oil
worth approximately $5.28 billion"
In 1901 came Red Fork Field and the emergence of Tulsa as "the Oil Capital of the World."
The Alluwe Field and the Cherokee Shallow Sands District soon were discovered, as was Cleveland, the first major discovery in Oklahoma Territory when it was opened in 1904, as were the Muskogee Field and its associated pools.
The following year Glenn Pool, one of the greatest oil fields ever,
made Oklahoma a national leader in oil production and induced several major energy companies to tie the state into their major oil transmission pipelines"
"more than 350 oil pools were located in the Osage Nation. The most prolific was the Burbank Field, opened in May 1920.
Also in 1906 the final Osage roll of 2,229 tribal members was completed. Tribal land was allotted, but mineral rights were held in common. Each member was entitled to one Osage headright, or one equal share of oil and natural gas royalty, and the money poured in.
On one afternoon in 1924 Walters sold $10,888,000 worth of leases, .
with a single 160-acre lease bringing $1,990,000. Such huge wealth occasioned an "Osage Reign of Terror,"
a series of crimes in which Osage headright holders were swindled
and sometimes murdered for their share of royalty money."
Oklahoma scientists also were in the forefront of the petrochemical industry.
In 1927 John C. Walker of Empire Gas and Fuel Company (later Cities Service Oil Company) worked to eliminate the problem of rust in the company's natural gas pipeline system. Walker hoped to remove oxygen from the gas by promoting oxidation at high temperature, but
the experiment unexpectedly created formaldehyde, methanol, acetone, acetaldehyde, higher alcohols, ketones, and aldehydes.
Walker unwittingly had given birth to Oklahoma's petrochemical industry. Cities Service's plant at Tallant, the state's first such facility, became known as "the petrochemical patriarch of the Southwest."
"The huge demand for petroleum during World War II spurred additional drilling,
and in 1941 forty-one new fields were located in Oklahoma. At the same time the production of liquefied natural gas reached new heights.
In 1943 Ace Gutowsky located
the West Edmond Field
using modern seismographic equipment.
In 1947 the discovery well of the Golden Trend, which includes twenty-two separate fields, was completed. The West Short Junction Field was opened in 1948."
https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry?entry=PE023
