Cities Service

Citgo Petroleum Corporation

Type	Subsidiary
Industry	Oil and Gasoline
Founded	1910Bartlesville, Oklahoma, U.S.
Headquarters	Houston, Texas, U.S.
Key people	Asdrúbal Chávez, President and CEO
Products	Fuels, lubricants and petrochemicals
Revenue	US$32.028 billion (2004)
Net income	US$801 million (2008)
Owner	CITGO Holding Inc.
Number of employees	3,400
Website	www.citgo.com

Citgo Petroleum Corporation (or Citgo) is a Venezuelan-owned American refiner, transporter and marketer of transportation fuels, lubricants, petrochemicals and other industrial products. The company has its American headquarters in the Energy Corridor area of Houston, Texas.

The company traces its heritage back to the early 1900s and an oil entrepreneur named Henry Latham Doherty. After quickly climbing the ladder of success in the manufactured gas and electric utility world, Doherty in 1910 created his own organization, Cities Service Company, to supply gas and electricity to small public utilities. He began by acquiring gas producing properties in the mid-continent and southwest.

The company then developed a pipeline system, tapping dozens of gas pools. To make this gas available to consumers, Doherty moved to acquire distributing companies and tied them into a common source of supply. Cities Service became the first company in the mid-continent to use the slack demand period of summer to refill depleted fields near its market areas. In this way, gas could be conveniently and inexpensively withdrawn during peak demand times. In 1931, Cities Service completed the nation's first long-distance high pressure natural gas transportation system, a 24-inch pipeline stretching some 1,000 miles from Amarillo, Texas, to Chicago, Illinois.

A logical step in the company's program for finding and developing supplies of natural gas was its entry into the oil business. This move was marked by major discoveries at Augusta, Kansas, in 1914, and in El Dorado a year later. In 1928, a Cities Service subsidiary, Empire Oil & Refining, discovered the Oklahoma City field, one of the world's largest. Another participated in the discovery of the East Texas field, which, in its time, was the most sensational on the globe.

Over three decades, the company sponsored the Cities Service Concerts on NBC radio. The long run of these musical broadcasts was heard on NBC from 1925 to 1956, encompassing a variety of vocalists and musicians. In 1944, it was retitled Highways in Melody, and later the series was known as The Cities Service Band of America. In 1964, the company moved its headquarters from Bartlesville, Oklahoma, to Tulsa.