Unocal Corporation

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

(Redirected from Unocal)
Jump to: navigation, search

The Unocal Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Chevron Corporation, based in El Segundo, California, was founded in 1890 as the Union Oil Company of California. Unocal is also known as Unocal 76. Union 76 gasoline is no longer sold by the company, which sold its retail operations to ConocoPhillips. In April 2005, the company agreed to a merger with ChevronTexaco (now Chevron); however, in June 2005, the Chinese oil company Cnooc made a rival $18.5 billion bid. On July 19, 2005, Unocal agreed to merge with Chevron. Unocal and Chevron completed their merger on August 10, 2005.

Contents

History

Unocal was founded on October 17, 1890, when it was incorporated in Santa Paula, California, as the Union Oil Company of California. The company was formed by the merger of co-founders Lyman Stewart, Thomas Bard, and Wallace Hardison's holdings. Union Oil moved its headquarters to Los Angeles in 1901. The original headquarters in Santa Paula is a California Historical Landmark. The company expanded to national status in 1965, when Union Oil merged with the Pure Oil Company of Illinois. Over the next two decades, Union became the major oil producer in southern Alaska and a major natural gas producer in the Gulf of Mexico. The company was reorganized in 1983 and the Union Oil Company of California became an operating subsidiary of a new holding company, Unocal Corporation.

Central Asia

Unocal was one of the key players in the CentGas consortium, an attempt to build a pipeline to run from the Caspian area, through Afghanistan and probably Pakistan, to the Indian Ocean. One of the consultants to Unocal at that time was Zalmay Khalilzad, now US ambassador to Iraq. The CentGas pipeline was not built, due to inability of CentGas and the Taliban to come to a mutually acceptable economic understanding. Shortly thereafter, the US invaded Afghanistan, removing Taliban control from Afghanistan and making moot the question of their remuneration.

Unocal is also the third largest member of the recently completed and opened Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline from the Caspian to the Mediterranean Sea.

Myanmar

Unocal was charged with numerous human rights violations in the construction of the Yadana Pipeline in Myanmar, also known as Burma. Since 1988, Myanmar has been governed by a particularly unstable and militaristic regime. The pipeline consortium (which included Unocal) hired the Burmese military, according to the company to protect the pipeline from insurgents and terrorists. The soldiers have been accused by villagers in the vicinity of the pipeline of torture, rape and forced labor. Unocal condemns these actions and points out that the company does not control the Burmese military and did not hire them to police residents. Plaintiffs cite the Alien Tort Claims Act of 1789, a law originally designed to aid victims of pirates. The United States Department of Justice has taken measures to oppose use of the law in human rights cases, and business groups have lobbied the U.S. Congress to repeal the law. It is said to interfere with US foreign relations. This would nullify all pending lawsuits filed under the act. Plaintiffs and Unocal settled the lawsuits against Unocal for an unspecified amount in April 2005.

References

Eviatar, Daphne (May 9, 2005). A Big Win for Human Rights. The Nation.

Global Business vs. Global Justice NOW with Bill Moyers, Jan. 9, 2004.

Howard, John E. (Oct. 2002). The Alien Tort Claims Act: Is Our Litigation-Run-Amok Going Global?. Retrieved Oct. 6, 2005.

Unocal. The story you haven't heard about. . . The Yadana Project in Myanmar Retrieved Oct. 6, 2005.

Zagaris, Bruce (October 2002). US Asks US Court to Stop Human Rights Suit by Indonesian Villagers Against ExxonMobil for Counterterrorism Purposes. International Enforcement Law Reporter.

External links

Personal tools
In other languages