Getty Oil
Encyclopedia
Getty Oil is an oil company founded by J. Paul Getty
J. Paul Getty
Jean Paul Getty was an American industrialist. He founded the Getty Oil Company, and in 1957 Fortune magazine named him the richest living American, whilst the 1966 Guinness Book of Records named him as the world's richest private citizen, worth an estimated $1,200 million. At his death, he was...

. It was at its height during the 1960s. In 1971, the Getty Realty division was formed to manage the real estate needs of Getty stations. The division was later spun off, but now owns the rights to the Getty brand. Lukoil sold Getty Petroleum Marketing to a private investment group in 2011.

Soon after 1970, the Getty Oil Company sold its European activities to Burmah Oil. At that times its assets included the rights to the Veedol name and a refinery in Gaeta
Gaeta
Gaeta is a city and comune in the province of Latina, in Lazio, central Italy. Set on a promontory stretching towards the Gulf of Gaeta, it is 120 km from Rome and 80 km from Naples....

, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 (which had an associated Getty branded service station). Burmah kept Veedol separate from its main Castrol
Castrol
Castrol is a brand of industrial and automotive lubricants which is applied to a large range of oils, greases and similar products for most lubrication applications...

 brand, and the name was still in used in several countries after BP
BP
BP p.l.c. is a global oil and gas company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the third-largest energy company and fourth-largest company in the world measured by revenues and one of the six oil and gas "supermajors"...

 bought Burmah in 2000. In 1984, Texaco
Texaco
Texaco is the name of an American oil retail brand. Its flagship product is its fuel "Texaco with Techron". It also owns the Havoline motor oil brand....

 bought Getty Oil of Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...

. By General Assignment, Conveyance, Bill of Sale and Transfer dated December 31, 1984, Getty Oil Company transferred its upstream interests to Texaco. On November 19, 1985, Pennzoil
Pennzoil
Pennzoil is an American oil company founded in Los Angeles, California in 1913. In 1955, it was acquired by Oil City, Pennsylvania company South Penn Oil, a former branch of Standard Oil. In 1963, South Penn Oil merged with Zapata Petroleum; the merged company took the Pennzoil name. During the...

 won a US$10.53 billion verdict from Texaco in the largest civil verdict in US history. (Texaco established a signed contract to buy Getty Oil after Pennzoil had already entered into an unsigned, yet still binding, buyout contract with Getty.)

In the end, only some of the refineries changed hands, and Getty continued to exist as a downstream entity. Getty gas stations in the Northeast were sold off as a condition of the buyout. At one time, some were co-branded with Mid-Atlantic convenience store chain Uni-Mart
Uni-Mart
Uni-Mart is a Pennsylvania-based company that owns, operates and franchises hundreds of convenience stores in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States....

, which now sells its own brand of gasoline. The company became known as Getty Marketing.

In November 2000, Russian oil company Lukoil
LUKoil
Lukoil/LUKoil ; ) is Russia's second largest oil company and its second largest producer of oil. In 2009, the company produced 97.615 million tons of oil; ....

 purchased Getty Marketing, which had been spun off of Getty Realty, and in 2003 converted a small number of Getty stations to Lukoil. In 2004, Lukoil bought many Mobil
Mobil
Mobil, previously known as the Socony-Vacuum Oil Company, was a major American oil company which merged with Exxon in 1999 to form ExxonMobil. Today Mobil continues as a major brand name within the combined company, as well as still being a gas station sometimes paired with their own store or On...

 stations from ConocoPhillips
ConocoPhillips
ConocoPhillips Company is an American multinational energy corporation with its headquarters located in the Energy Corridor district of Houston, Texas in the United States...

, which had bought the stations from ExxonMobil
ExxonMobil
Exxon Mobil Corporation or ExxonMobil, is an American multinational oil and gas corporation. It is a direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil company, and was formed on November 30, 1999, by the merger of Exxon and Mobil. Its headquarters are in Irving, Texas...

 in 2000. ExxonMobil sold these stations off due to an antitrust
Antitrust
The United States antitrust law is a body of laws that prohibits anti-competitive behavior and unfair business practices. Antitrust laws are intended to encourage competition in the marketplace. These competition laws make illegal certain practices deemed to hurt businesses or consumers or both,...

 settlement soon after Exxon and Mobil merged. These stations were converted to Lukoil quickly for legal reasons.

According to Getty Realty's 2006 annual report, Getty Realty owns the Getty trademark and trade name in the United States and licenses them to Getty Marketing (owned by Lukoil). In Europe the trademark was owned by Texaco before Olaf Westerhoudt acquired the rights in 2007 for an undisclosed amount.

At one point, Getty Oil owned a majority stake of ESPN
ESPN
Entertainment and Sports Programming Network, commonly known as ESPN, is an American global cable television network focusing on sports-related programming including live and pre-taped event telecasts, sports talk shows, and other original programming....

, before it was sold to the American Broadcasting Company
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...

 in 1984.

As of August 2009, many Getty stations in New England have been converted to BP or are in the process of doing so. Evidence of converted stations can could be found in Providence, RI, Athol, MA, Fall River, MA, New Bedford, MA, Woburn, MA, Bloomfield, CT, Southington, CT, Watertown, CT, Danbury, CT, Salem, NH, Lowell, MA, Woonsocket, RI, and Middletown, CT.
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