Pennzoil is an oil company originally founded in Oil City, Pennsylvania. In 1963,
South Penn Oil merged with Zapata Petroleum to become Pennzoil. During the 1970s,
the company moved its offices to Houston, Texas. It was then headquartered
in Pennzoil Place, a recognizable skyscraper designed by the architect Philip Johnson.
In 1998, the company merged with onetime rival Quaker State to form Pennzoil-Quaker
State. In 2002, the Royal Dutch/Shell Group purchased Pennzoil-Quaker
State to form SOPUS--Shell Oil Products US. Both Pennzoil and Quaker State
are now marketed together as a result
Though not much emphasis has ever
been placed on gasoline, Pennzoil does sell gas. In the early parts of the
company's history, the gas stations were branded as Pennzip, though they were later
changed to Pennzoil. For decades, Pennzoil gas stations were mostly marketed
in western Pennsylvania, western New York, northern and eastern Ohio, and northern
West Virginia. In the 1990s, Pennzoil gas did have somewhat of a revival
when Pittsburgh area convenience store chain Cogo's began cobranding themselves
with Pennzoil. The cobranding only lasted a few years, and Cogo's switched brands
to BP and Exxon in 2001.
After Shell's purchase of Pennzoil, there
was the possibility that the remaining Pennzoil stations--mostly in western
PA--would be converted to Shell as part of the company's aggressive movement to
expand nationally. This hasn't happened, but all company-owned Pennzoil gas stations
with convenience stores (mostly located in the New Castle, Pennsylvania
area) began cobranding themselves with 7-Eleven in 2003, with more emphasis placed
on the 7-Eleven brand name than Pennzoil itself. In 1984, Pennzoil made
an informal, yet still binding, contract with the Getty Oil company to purchase
the company. The deal, however, was encroached upon by the Texaco oil company
when it instead attempted to acquire Getty. In a landmark lawsuit presided
over by Judge Solomon (Sol) Casseb of San Antonio, Pennzoil, represented by a legal
team including Joe Jamail and Baine Kerr, won $10.53 billion from Texaco.
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