Up for sale is a Vintage 1920s Cities Service ONCE - ALWAYS City Service Oil Co. Motor Oil 5 Gallon Rocker Can. This "Roller" Rocker can is in original
vintage condition and shows some dings / dents and wear from age. Please see photos. This would make a great addition to any Petroleum / Petroliana collection, man
cave, hot rod, rat rod garage, Shop or office. The dent on the bottom should easily be pushed out, even though there are many photos of the dent, there is only 1 major dent and 1 ding on theedge.
Cities Service Company was established in September 1910 by Henry
Latham Doherty as a public utility holding company in Bartlesville,
Oklahoma, home of the first commercial Oklahoma oil well. Five years after its founding, Doherty’s company would make its own historic discoveries.
Doherty began by selectively purchasing natural gas producing
properties in Kansas and Oklahoma. He acquired distributing companies
and linked them to his natural gas supplies. Cities Service Company
derived income from the subsidiary corporations’ stock dividends. One
natural gas subsidiary drilled exploratory wells in central Kansas.
On October 5, 1915, Cities Service’s Wichita Natural Gas Company
discovered the 34-square-mile El Dorado oilfield. As oil and natural gas
holdings expanded in the Mid-Continent, the company added the Empire
Gas & Fuel Company of Bartlesville, Oklahoma.
In 1928, Empire Oil & Refining, the Cities Service subsidiary,
discovered the giant Oklahoma City oilfield. Production also came from
the Greater Seminole oilfield, discovered earlier near Seminole. Drilled
in July 1926, the Fixico No. 1 well revealed the prolific Wilcox sands
at 4,073 feet and launched a drilling boom rivaling those in Texas.
Over the next decade more than 60 petroleum reservoirs were found in
1,300 square miles of east-central Oklahoma – and seven were “giants,”
producing more than one million barrels of oil each.
A March 1930 a well hit a high-pressure formation about 6,500 feet
beneath the state capital, Oklahoma City. A geyser of oil erupted — and
flowed skyward for 11 days. The Oklahoma City oilfield discovery well
soon became an international sensation.
Henry Latham Doherty formed the Cities Service Company on September
2, 1910. A New York–based holding company, it derived income from
dividends generated by stock held in subsidiary corporations. Cities
Service was designed to concentrate on public utilities, such as natural
gas, electric, and transportation companies, but quickly became
involved in the burgeoning petroleum and natural gas industry. The
company developed large holdings in the Mid-Continent Region as early as
1912, when it acquired the assets of Theodore N. Barnsdall, who
operated primarily in Oklahoma. Two years later Cities Service began
extensive works in the Kansas oil fields. Those developments resulted in
the formation of the Empire Gas and Fuel Company, which was
headquartered in Bartlesville, Oklahoma.
By 1918 Cities Service
companies operated seven oil refineries, five of which were in Oklahoma,
and were active in nine Oklahoma oil fields. During the 1920s Cities
Service located three of the five pools that comprised the Greater
Seminole Oil Field, and one of the company's subsidiaries, the Indian
Territory Illuminating Oil Company, discovered the Oklahoma City Oil
Field in 1928. Cities Service became a major American enterprise with
operations across the nation and abroad. In 1940, however, federal
courts ordered Cities Service to divest itself of either its public
utility companies or its oil and gas firms, pursuant to the Public
Utilities Holding Company Act of 1935. Because the oil and gas business
was so lucrative, the company decided to separate from its more than two
hundred public utility companies. The long and tedious divestiture
process was completed in 1958, and the following year the Cities Service
Oil Company, headquartered at Bartlesville, was formed to absorb all
the oil companies owned by the original corporation.
In 1968
Cities Service moved its headquarters to Tulsa. It remained there until
in 1982 it became a wholly owned subsidiary of the Occidental Petroleum
Company. Occidental absorbed all the Cities Service divisions except for
refining and marketing, which continued to operate under the name
Citgo, with headquarters at Houston, Texas. Now under foreign ownership,
Cities Service Oil Company played a major role in the social and
economic fabric of Oklahoma during most of the twentieth century. It
employed thousands and played a significant role in the state's oil and
gas industry.
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