Cities Service

The Cities Service Company was an American public utility and integrated petroleum company that existed from 1910 to 1988. Cities was formed by Henry Latham Doherty as a holding company for three public utilities he owned. Within the company's first five years, it had around 170 utilities under its control and had begun to explore for oil and natural gas. Cities was a major petroleum producer during World War I and played a significant part in America's war effort.

During World War II, Cities served again as a major producer in support of the Allied war effort and its executives were instrumental in the construction of the Big Inch pipeline. After the passage of the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935, Cities was obligated to dispose of its utility operations. It began this process in 1941 and sold off its last utility in 1954, thus becoming exclusively an oil and gas company. In 1965, Cities devised the Citgo brand for its retail operations. By the early 1980s, Cities was the country's 19th largest oil company.

In 1981, Cities fended off a hostile takeover attempt by T. Boone Pickens. The following year, a possible merger with Gulf Oil fell through. In late 1982, Cities was acquired outright by Occidental Petroleum, whose reserves at the time were almost entirely outside the States. In the summer of 1983, Occidental spun off Cities' downstream assets to Southland Corporation as the Citgo Petroleum Corporation. Cities continued as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Occidental after the takeover and formed the basis of Occidental's domestic operations. In April 1988, its name was changed to Oxy Oil & Gas USA, and then on December 31, 1988, it merged into its subsidiary, Oxy USA Inc.