Amoco

Amoco (/æməkoʊ/) was a brand of fuel stations operating in the United States and owned by BP since 1998. The Amoco Corporation was an American chemical and oil company, founded by Standard Oil Company in 1889 around a refinery in Whiting, Indiana, and was officially the Standard Oil Company of Indiana until 1985. Originally part of the Standard Oil Company trust, it focused on producing gasoline for the new automobile market. In 1911, as part of the break-up of the Standard Oil trust, it became an independent corporation. Incorporated in Indiana, it was headquartered in Chicago, and formally adopted the name Amoco in 1985. Although the Amoco Corporation merged in 1998 into BP Amoco, the Amoco name was resurrected in 2017 as a brand that service station owners could choose to use when they purchased supplies from BP in selected areas of the United States.
In 1925, Standard Oil of Indiana absorbed the American Oil Company, founded in Baltimore in 1910, and incorporated in 1922, by Louis Blaustein and his son Jacob. The combined corporation operated or licensed gas stations under both the Standard name and the American or Amoco name (the latter from American oil company) and its logo using these names became a red, white and blue oval with a torch in the center. By the mid-twentieth century it was ranked the largest oil company in the United States. In 1985, it changed its corporate name to Amoco. Amoco merged with British Petroleum in December 1998 to form BP Amoco, renamed BP in 2001.
The firm's innovations included two essential parts of the modern industry, the gasoline tanker truck and the drive-through filling station. Its "Amoco Super-Premium" lead-free gasoline was marketed decades before environmental concerns led to the eventual phase out of leaded gasoline throughout the United States. Amoco's headquarters were located in the Amoco Building (also called the Standard Oil Building, and nicknamed "Big Stan", now the Aon Center) in Chicago, Illinois.
In October 2017, BP announced reintroduction of the Amoco brand name to select US markets. As of 2021, there were over 100 new Amoco locations in the states of Georgia, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Michigan, Minnesota, Indiana, Wisconsin, Missouri, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Illinois.
==Brand relaunch==
It was announced on October 10, 2017, that BP will bring the Amoco name back, after an absence of almost a decade. BP had said the first station would relaunch in 2017. Its intention for relaunching the name is to capture more of the U.S. fuel industry.
As such, aside from the aforementioned St. Louis station with the large Amoco sign as well as a few other isolated instances, most newer Amoco stations are converted from competitor brands as opposed to BP.
As three of BP's Big Oil competitors already sold gasoline under multiple brands that were once competitors (ExxonMobil with Exxon & Mobil, Chevron with its namesake brand & Texaco, and Phillips 66 with its namesake brand, Conoco, & 76), this left Shell Oil Company as the only Big Oil company to sell gasoline under one brand.[original research?]
Several Gulf stations were rechristened as Amoco stations on Long Island, New York, starting in November 2017.[failed verification]
The Amoco brand returned to the Pittsburgh market in Fall 2020, when locally-based Coen Markets announced a marketing deal with BP to sell Amoco-branded gasoline at all of its fuel-offering locations. As most of Coen's stores were already selling BP gasoline (with a small handful having been Amoco stations before BP), this marked the largest switchover from BP to Amoco since the brand's reintroduction, though a few Coen stations were also selling Exxon, Sunoco, and Citgo prior to the deal. While the deal didn't affect BP as a whole, as BP lost several stations in the market to Marathon Petroleum years before, it essentially relegated the BP brand to 7-Eleven stations in the market as well as a few independent
Category:Gas stations
Category:Retailers
Category:Companies
Category:Franchises
Category:Brands