Under booming war conditions, Harry F. Sinclair saw enticing opportunities to extend his oil domain along the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic coast. But his bankers refused to finance such expansion, since the $50-million building program was under way in the mid-continent. Sinclair's reaction was typical. He organized a separate complex in 1917 to fulfill his vision.

Sinclair Gulf Corporation was a wedding of three established enterprises, plus 16,000 barrels a day of oil production in Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas, plus a potential 150,000 barrels a day in Mexico. From a 15,000-barrel refinery at Mereaux, Louisiana, near New Orleans, 17 tankers spread products to ocean terminals as far away as New York harbor. A pipe line was under construction from Oklahoma to the Houston, Texas ship channel, to serve a proposed lubricants refinery there.

Vital as these acquisitions were, an important extra was a staff of 4,000 employees skilled in key branches of the industry. Sinclair Gulf, at its birth, was almost as large as the other Sinclair corporation.

[ Previous | Index | Next ]