---
title: "Chevron → Gulf Oil"
url: "https://mahouse.world/ma-deals/chevron-buy-gulf-oil-1984"
type: "M&A deal"
year: "1984"
---

# Chevron → Gulf Oil

Standard Oil of California paid $13.2bn, or $80 a share, for Gulf Oil in 1984 — history's biggest merger at the time — as a white knight rescuing one of the Seven Sisters from T. Boone Pickens's far smaller Mesa Petroleum, and renamed itself Chevron as the deal closed.

The largest acquisition of its day, ending Gulf Oil's independence after a takeover battle with Mesa Petroleum.

- **Acquirer:** Chevron (United States)
- **Target:** Gulf Oil (United States)
- **Value:** $13.2B
- **Announced:** March 1984
- **Completed:** June 1984
- **Sector:** Energy
- **Deal type:** acquisition

## Why it mattered

Gulf, based in Pittsburgh and long a pillar of the Mellon family fortune, entered the contest with its credibility already damaged: in 1982 it had outbid Mesa for Cities Service and then walked away from the deal, leaving Wall Street distrustful of its management. From 1983 Pickens and his partners bought Gulf shares, passing 11% by October. Gulf reincorporated in Delaware to end cumulative voting and fought a proxy contest, but by early 1984 Mesa's group was its largest shareholder, with 13.2%, and had launched a $65-a-share tender offer for more of the stock. Atlantic Richfield was reported ready to bid $78 to $80 a share.

On 5 March 1984 Gulf agreed to merge into a subsidiary of Socal at $80 a share. Socal ranked fifth among US oil companies and Gulf sixth; together they would be third, behind Exxon and Mobil. The deal came shortly after Texaco's $10.1bn purchase of Getty and alarmed Congress: the Senate considered a one-year freeze on oil mergers until the Reagan administration signalled it would veto one. Socal became Chevron Corporation on 1 July 1984 as the purchase completed. The Federal Trade Commission gave final approval, 4–0, in October, requiring Chevron to hold Gulf's US assets separate until it had sold one of Gulf's two refineries and its interests in several thousand service stations across seven south-eastern states.

## What it left behind

The Mesa group was reported to have made $760m by selling its Gulf shares to Chevron. Chevron sold Gulf's Alliance refinery in Louisiana to Sohio and eastern stations to BP and Cumberland Farms, and Gulf Canada went to other buyers. Pittsburgh lost about 900 research jobs and 600 headquarters jobs to transfers and cuts, and Gulf's laboratories were donated to the University of Pittsburgh. In the US the Gulf name lived on under licence, and in 2010 Chevron sold the US trademarks outright to Cumberland Farms' Gulf Oil LP. Chevron itself went on to merge with Texaco in 2001. Once a raider has put a company in play, the board's real choice is no longer whether to sell but to whom; a minority stake of 13% was enough to end the independence of a company in the top ten of American industry.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_Oil