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Navigation aidATLANTIC

Brief History

Atlantic was a US oil refiner formed in 1866 that later became part of the Standard Oil Trusts. Initially restricted to Pennsylvania and Delaware, it began to expand internationally in parallel with its domestic growth, establishing marketing subsidiaries in Australia, New Zealand, Brazil and a number of European countries. Much of the European operation was lost following the Second World War, although it is thought that its Italian operation limped on until the early 1960s.

In 1966 Atlantic merged with Richfield Oil and four years later bought Sinclair to form a revitalised company (AtlanticRichfield) operating under the ARCO brand name. However it increasingly concentrated on its US West Coast interests (Alaskan crude feeding Pacific Coast marketing) and was eventually acquired by BP Amoco in 2000.

In the mid 1960s Atlantic started building a new chain in Britain, but after a few years under the Arco name this was sold to Total, finally ending its European marketing.

Maps:

European Atlantic maps are extremely rare, and are currently only known by this early Italian map, posted to a customer on 24 Feb 1932. It has the logo used in the US until 1933, and came in a paper envelope.

Envelope from 1932 Atlantic Map of Italy

Extract from 1932 Atlantic Map of Italy

Silvio Mittino created the map at 1:1,250,000, which showed 4 different categories of towns by the status of the Atlantic agency present: Sede, Filiali, Agenzie Generali or Agenzie Locali.
Images courtesy of Richard Horwitz.

In 1969 the AtlanticRichfield Company acquired Sinclair Refining which had also issued a few maps in Europe.


Text and layout © Ian Byrne, 2002

All original copyrights in logos and map extracts and images are acknowledged and images are included on this site for identification purposes only.