GULF OIL CORPORATION

major American petroleum company; it was acquired by Chevron Corporation (q.v.) in 1984. Gulf Oil was originally incorporated in 1907 but had beginnings going back to the tapping in 1901 of an enormous oil gusher on Spindletop Hill, near Beaumont, Texas. The development of this well was funded by the Mellon family of Pittsburgh banking fame. Following the discovery, Thomas Mellon built the Gulf refinery in Port Arthur, Texas. The firm continued to develop oil fields in Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana, as well as in Mexico and Venezuela; by 1923 the Port Arthur refinery was the largest in the world. Gulf was the first oil company to enter the consumer gasoline market when it opened a drive-in filling station in Pittsburgh in 1913. It has a heavy investment in forms of energy other than oil and has secondary interests in chemicals, minerals, and nuclear power.