Expansion of the Sinclair enterprise during the depression years 1930-1936 was partly due to the salvage of companies in receivership or bankruptcy. Except for Sinclair participation, they would have disappeared, at huge loss of jobs, investments and community prosperity. One such company was Producers & Refiners Corporation.

This oil company operated chiefly in Wyoming, Idaho and Utah, with some oil production, many untested but promising leases, large but undeveloped natural gas reserves in Wyoming and the Texas panhandle and an 8,000-barrel refinery in the company-owned town of Parco, Wyoming. More than 600 families relied on Producers and Refiners, or Parco as it was called, for their livelihood. When Sinclair took over the Prairie companies, it inherited 65 percent of Parco. This was a dubious asset. Prairie had loaned Parco more than three million dollars and had guaranteed $10 million of Parco's debts. One month after the Prairie merger, Parco defaulted its notes. Sinclair had to pay them.

Parco went into receivership. At court-ordered public auctions in 1934, Sinclair bid in most of the Producers and Refiners properties, paying for them with about $10 million of its $13,600,000 accrued claims against the company. Developed soundly by Sinclair management, the former Parco facilities became assets to their communities and keystones of Sinclair operations in the Rocky Mountain region.

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