Sunoco LP is an American master limited partnership organized under Delaware state laws and headquartered in Dallas, Texas. Dating back to 1886, the company has transitioned from a vertically integrated energy company to a distributor of fuels. It was previously engaged in oil, natural gas exploration and production, refining, chemical manufacturing, and retail fuel sales, but divested these businesses. Sunoco is the largest independent distributor of fuels in the United States.
Its current operational focus dates back to 2018 when it divested the noncore convenience store operations to 7-Eleven to focus on fuel distribution and midstream terminal operations.
Sunoco distributes multiple unbranded fuel brands and also owns its own brand of retail fuel, which shares the same name as the parent company. Sunoco distributes fuel to over 5,200 fuel station locations across 30 U.S. States, Ontario, Canada, and Quebec, Canada
The partnership was known as Sun Company, Inc. from 1886 to 1920 and 1976 to 1998, and as Sun Oil Co. from 1920 to 1976. (The Sunoco name is a condensation of SUN Oil COmpany.)
History
1800s to 1950s: founding and growth
The partnership began as The Peoples Natural Gas Company in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 1886, its partners Joseph Newton Pew, Philip Pisano, and Edward O. Emerson decided to expand their fuel business with a stake in the new oil discoveries in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Four years later, the growing enterprise became the Sun Oil Company of Ohio. Sun Oil diversified quickly, active in the production and distribution of oil as well as processing and marketing refined products. By 1901, the company was incorporated in New Jersey as Sun Company, Inc.
In 1902, the Sun Oil Refining Company was chartered in Texas, as it turned its interest to the new Spindletop field in Texas. Joseph Newton Pew's nephew, J. Edgar Pew, was able to buy the storage and transportation assets of Lone Star and Crescent Oil Company at a receivership auction. Spindletop oil was then shipped to the company's Marcus Hook, Pennsylvania, refinery.
Pew's sons, J. Howard Pew and Joseph N. Pew, Jr. would take over the company after their father's death.
With a growing portfolio of oil fields and refineries, Sun opened its first service station in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, in 1920. In 1922, it changed its name back to Sun Oil Company and, in 1925, it became a public company via an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange. Sunoco ranked 39th among United States corporations in the value of World War II production contracts. Sun expanded internationally following the war. Its first Canadian refinery was built in 1953 in Sarnia, Ontario, home to a burgeoning new petrochemical industry. Sun established a facility at Venezuela's Lake Maracaibo in 1957, which produced over a billion barrels (160,000,000 m3) before the operation was nationalized in 1975.
In 1956, Sunoco introduced "CustomBlended" fuel pumps, an innovation that allowed customers of Sunoco service stations to choose from several octane ratings through a single pump. Sunoco stations offered as many as eight grades of "CustomBlended" fuels from its "Dial A Grade/Blend Selector" pumps ranging from subregular Sunoco 190 to Sunoco 260 and super-premium grade of 102 octane. The Sunoco 260 was advertised as "The Highest Octane Fuel You Can Buy!" and very popular with operators of V8powered muscle cars of the 1960s.
1960s to 1990s: acquisitions and branding
In 1967, Sun established its Great Canadian Oil Sands Limited facility in northern Alberta, Canada to access the estimated 300 billion barrels (48 km3) of extractable oil in the Athabasca oil sands.
In 1968, Sun Oil merged with Tulsa, Oklahomabased Sunray DX Oil Company, which refined and marketed fuel under the DX brand in several midwestern states, and included several refineries. Its Tulsa refinery was operated by Sun until its sale in June 2009 to Holly Corporation of Dallas. This move expanded Sun's marketing area into the midcontinent region.
Sun Oil continued marketing its petroleum products under both the Sunoco and DX brands through the 1970s and into the 1980s. In the late 1980s, Sun began rebranding DX stations in the Midwest to the Sunoco brand, but by the early 1990s, they pulled out of virtually all areas in the southeastern U.S. and west of the Mississippi, resulting in the closing and rebranding of service stations and jobbers to other brands in those areas, notably Sinclair in Oklahoma and Kerr-McGee in Arkansas.