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Company— The Texas Corp. is as self-contained as any tanker Captain Rieber ever took out of Port Arthur, Tex., site of the company's biggest refinery. In the U. S. it owns 775,000 acres of oil lands outright, leases another 5,800,000 acres, has more than 7,000 producing wells. It has about 6,800 miles of its own crude pipelines and an interest in 1,300 miles more. Texaco pipeline communications require 11,500 miles of wire. To transport Texaco products no less than 500,000 tons of shipping are used, including its own fleet of 23 steam tankers, nine motor vessels, six ships under long-term charter and 175 other craft of assorted shapes & sizes. Texaco has 23 refineries, seven of them with a daily crude capacity of more than 15,000 bbl. The Port Arthur works can handle 80,000 bbl. of crude. On U. S. tidewater it has 20 bulk terminals, 41 in foreign lands. A Texaco factory last year turned out 45,000,000 tin cans. It sells more than 350 products ranging from gasoline and motor lubricants to refrigerating oils, floor wax and asphalt shingles. And it sells them through 40,000 retail outlets—widest marketing organization of any oil company in the U. S. At present Texaco's entire oil production is domestic, though its undeveloped foreign holdings amount to nearly 800,000 acres. Its own production last year was 46,000,000 bbl., but another 32,000,000 bbl. was bought from other producers to supply the 78,000,000 bbl. which ran through Texaco refineries. Yet Texaco sells one fifth of its oil abroad, marketing in some 100 foreign lands. The red, white and green Texaco trademark is as familiar to the motorist on Shanghai's Bubbling Well Road or in Elisabethville, Belgian Congo, as it is to U. S. motorists in all 48 states. In the Barco deal Texaco was looking ahead to the inevitable day when the U. S. will embargo the export of oil. In Collier's fortnight ago Standard of New Jersey's Walter Teagle declared: "Some day the U. S. is going to run out of oil. There are no two ways about it."
With tens of millions invested in refining and marketing equipment, Texaco has to be sure of its crude supply. Otherwise the company would be pretty much at the mercy of crude producers. Texaco has $473,000,000 in assets, 85,000 stockholders and 30,000 individuals who make one of the finest oil organizations in the industry, a unit never affected by the showdowns and walkouts at the top. Last year Texaco made a profit of $17,000,000, which was a fat increase over the $5,500,000 reported for 1934, though still far short of the 1929 record, $48,000,000. But without a sure source of crude oil Texaco might not be able to pay the dividends which have been declared every year since the company was organized upon one of the richest oil pools ever found—historic Spindletop in Texas.