Success Story
Epic
Pipeline Completion Makes Sinclair Competitive
With Biggest in Industry
As
a small producer, fighting to move his crude
 oil
from glutted fields to profitable markets,
Sinclair had learned the value of ownership and
control of pipeline transport. He had observed
also that the movement
of volatile products by
railroad tank car was costly compared with the
pipeline shipment of crude oil; obviously,
refineries should be located near markets, not
in the oil fields. All five of the Sinclair
refineries were isolated.
In a $50-million
operation, Sinclair made his embryo organization
into an important petroleum complex. His new
eight-inch diameter pipeline ran from the heart
of the mid-continent oil fields to the heart of
the Midwest.
Pipe
Line a 673-Mile Span
At East Chicago, Indiana, the terminus, and at
Kansas
 City, Kansas, which tapped the populous
Missouri and Mississippi valleys, refineries
were built simultaneously with the pipeline
construction, timed to go on stream when the
crude oil supply reached them. The line was
punctuated by twenty pumping stations. The pipe
line alone cost $30 million; the balance bought
refineries and marketing facilities. A crash
program raced the pipeline to completion at the
rate of a mile a day. On Lincoln's birthday,
1918, the job was completed. On Saint Patrick's
day a fitting time since most of the laborers
were Irish--the line was connected to the
refinery's first shell stills.
In
the same month both new refineries began to spew
gasoline and other products. Mr. Sinclair then
announced that he was ready to supply all the
petroleum needs of an area of middle America
inhabited by 40 million persons.
The achievement
impressed the United States government as well
as Mr. Sinclair's investors and competitors. In
recognition of his new eminence, Mr. Sinclair
was appointed to the petroleum section of the
World War I War Service Committee. His
colleagues were the eleven most important oil
men in America. They regulated the flow of
America's petroleum resources to war purposes.
The same dozen men became the nucleus which
organized the American Petroleum Institute. Both
Mr. Sinclair personally, and his boisterous,
aggressive but precariously-financed business,
had earned impressive prestige. A new giant was
already established in the petroleum market
place.
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