ARCO

History

Presence in Southwest U.S.

ARCO once had a presence in the Southwestern U.S.—a stretch of Texas State Highway 225 east of Loop 610 in Houston, Texas, had an oil tank farm once painted with the ARCO logo. Lyondell-Citgo would rebrand the oil tanks in the 1980s. ARCO's global corporate headquarters were in the ARCO Plaza in Los Angeles at the corner of 5th and Flower Streets, the site of Richfield's former headquarters. ARCO's Oil & Gas division headquarters were in downtown Dallas, Texas. The headquarters' building was a 46-story office building designed by architect I.M. Pei, the ARCO Tower. ARCO closed the Dallas office and sold the building in the mid-1980s. Today, ARCO operates about 1,100 stations in five Western states: California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, and Arizona.

Merger

ARCO merged with Anaconda Copper Mining Company of Montana in 1977. Anaconda's holdings included the Berkeley Pit and the Anaconda, Montana Smelter. ARCO founder stated "he hoped Anaconda's resources and expertise would help him launch a major shale-oil venture, but that the world oil glut and the declining price of petroleum made shale oil moot". The purchase turned out to be a regrettable decision for ARCO. A lack of experience with hard-rock mining and a sudden drop in the price of copper to below seventy cents a pound, the lowest in years, caused ARCO to suspend all operations in Butte, Montana. By 1983, only six years after acquiring rights to the "Richest Hill on Earth", the Berkeley Pit was completely idle. By 1986, some ARCO properties were sold to billionaire industrialist Dennis Washington, whose company, Montana Resources, operates a much smaller open-pit mine east of the defunct Berkeley Pit.

Acquisition

In 1985, the Atlantic brand was spun off for ARCO's East Coast stations as Atlantic Petroleum. Atlantic was acquired by Dutch trader John Deuss, who later sold it in 1988 to Sunoco. The ARCO brand is now used on the West Coast. ARCO specializes in discount gas by removing many frills, among them forcing prepayment for fuel, not accepting credit cards at most locations, and charging 35 cents for the use of debit cards. In most locations, it is co-branded with ampm convenience stores, also a division of BP West Coast (ARCO introduced the AmPm concept in 1979).

1990s

ARCO financed EASTLUND in the beginning of the 1990s for High Auroral Active Research Project (HAARP Project). In March 1997, ARCO also leased almost all the gas stations of the (now) Santa Fe Springs, California based independent Thrifty Oil group of 250 stations found throughout California after a damaging price war which the independent Thrifty was unable to win.

2000s

On April 18, 2000, ARCO was purchased by BP America and completely merged into BP operations. There were two exceptions due to FTC requirements: ARCO Alaska was sold by BP to Phillips Petroleum, and ARCO Pipe Line Company was acquired by TEPPCO, a subsidiary of Duke Energy. ARCO as a subsidiary no longer exists.

Over the course of 2004 and 2005, ARCO signs have been replaced. New signs still have the ARCO spark, but BP's Helios (BP's new white, yellow, and green "sunburst" mark named after the Greek Sun god, replacing the old British Petroleum shield mark) is also located on the sign. A new tagline "ARCO—part of BP" has also appeared on some signs and advertisements. ARCO was known for sponsoring the ARCO Arena (now Sleep Train Arena) in Sacramento, California, with a license fee of $750,000/year through 2007.

Superfund site

ARCO is the responsible party (by its ownership of Anaconda Copper at the time operations were terminated) for America's largest Superfund site—a site that takes in the towns of Butte and Anaconda, and 120 miles (190 km) of the Clark Fork River including Milltown Dam. The region's water and soil were polluted by a century of mining and smelting. Chemicals of concern include many heavy metals and arsenic. On 7 February 2008, the United States Environmental Protection Agency announced that prolonged litigation with ARCO ended when ARCO agreed to pay $187 million to finance natural resource restoration activities. Anaconda still nominally exists, but only as a massive environmental liability for ARCO.

In the media

The ARCO company was immortalized in George Romero's 1978 film Dawn of the Dead, which featured a zombie wearing a red baseball jersey that read "Bach's Arco Pitcairn".

Legal issues

Atlantic Richfield Co and its parent BP America agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by about 700 current and former residents of Yerington, Nevada, who lived near the Anaconda mine built in 1941. Company paid in Nevada up to $19.5M for settlement. EPA tested in 2009 wells and found that 79% of the wells north of mine had dangerous levels of uranium and/or arsenic.

In September 2010, the staff of KCST-FM in Florence, Oregon noticed that the station's Emergency Alert System (EAS) equipment would repeatedly unmute as if receiving an incoming EAS message several times a week. During each event, which was relayed from KKNU in Springfield, the same commercial advertisement for ARCO/BP gasoline could be heard, along with the words "This test has been brought to you by ARCO". Further investigation by the primary station transmitting the commercial revealed that the spot had been produced using an audio clip of an actual EAS header which had been modified to lower the header's volume and presumably prevent it from triggering false positive alert reactions in EAS equipment. The spot was distributed nationally, and after it had once been identified as the source of the false EAS equipment trips, various stations around the country reported having had similar experiences. After a widespread notification by the Society of Broadcast Engineers was issued, ARCO's ad agency withdrew the commercial from airplay.