Pennzoil

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Pennzoil's current version of their logo. The company has used variations of this logo since the 1920s.

Pennzoil is an oil company founded in Los Angeles, California in 1913. In 1955, it was acquired by Oil City, Pennsylvania company South Penn Oil, a former branch of Standard Oil. In 1963, South Penn Oil merged with Zapata Petroleum; the merged company took the 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.

Products

Jiffy Lube in Durham, North Carolina.

The following are products offered from Pennzoil:

• Motor Oils - Pennzoil motor oil is the mainstay of the Pennzoil brand name. As of FY 2007 Pennzoil was the number one selling motor oil in the United States, competing with Castrol, Valvoline, and Havoline.
• Gasoline - Pennzoil sells gasoline to motorists, mostly in western Pennsylvania.
• Jiffy Lube is a wholly owned subsidiary of Pennzoil-Quaker State Company. It was purchased in 1990. The company's franchise outlets offer quick oil changes, chassis lubes, and other automotive services.

Gasoline

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 experienced a bit of a revival when Pittsburgh area convenience store chain Cogo's began co-branding themselves with Pennzoil. The co-branding 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 the three company-owned Pennzoil gas stations in the New Castle, Pennsylvania area began co-branding themselves with 7-Eleven in 2003, with more emphasis placed on the 7-Eleven brand name than Pennzoil itself.

As of June 2009, only one Pennzoil/7-Eleven combination remains, as another converted to BP in 2006 while retaining 7-Eleven (a Pennzoil in Ambridge, Pennsylvania also converted to BP at the same time). On June 8, 2009, the other Pennzoil/7-Eleven was sold to private owners and became an independent, unbranded location. There is also a surviving Pennzoil station in Ashtabula, Ohio right off of Ohio State Route 11.

Controversy

Controversy arose in November 2003 following an investigation by NBC when it was discovered via the use of hidden camera that certain Jiffy Lube service stations were charging motorists for work they had in fact not performed. ^[1]

Pennzoil v. Texaco

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. (The case was appealed, and the decision of the trial court was upheld on condition that Pennzoil file a remittitur agreeing to a reduction of punitive damages from $3 billion, to $1 billion, while the compensatory damages of $7.53 billon remained unaffected) Pennzoil paid Mr. Jamail $335 million and Mr. Kerr $10 million for the victory.

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Jiffy Lube

• Pennzoil Official Web Site
• Shell's US Site
• Quaker State's Official Web Site
• SOPUS Official Web Site
• Good Writeup on Pennzoil History
• Press Release on Pennzoil - Quaker State Merger
• Jiffy Lube web site