Harry Sinclair's options consisted of 478 miles of gathering pipelines to important fields, five refineries with a gross capacity of 15,300 barrels a day, the Cudahy marketing facilities in Kansas--and, more important, the Cudahy organizational know-how of experienced technologists and salesmen. Including his own resources, Sinclair controlled 532 wells capable of producing five and a half million barrels of crude oil a year. The package was valued at $50 million. With these assets Sinclair invaded Wall Street, which never had invested extensively in the new oil industry. Sinclair borrowed $20 million from New York bankers to buy assets then bargains due to the glut of mid-continent oil, and to fling a pipeline across the head of the mid-continent linking new refineries to be built at Kansas City and Chicago.

The Sinclair Oil & Refining Corporation was established on May 1, 1916.  With characteristic daring and optimism, Harry Sinclair secured a charter "in perpetuity" from New York State. To shake off his provincialism, he established his headquarters in New York. Harry Sinclair himself still lacked three months of being forty years old. He and his company had joined the big powers of the oil industry.

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