CONSUMERS LIKELY UNAFFECTED AS OIL FIRM CHANGES HANDS AGAIN.Byline: Gregory J. Wilcox Staff Writer The orange, white and blue ball, long the public face of Unocal Corp., will survive that company's merger Monday with giant ChevronTexaco Corp. Unocal sold its West Coast refining refining, any of various processes for separating impurities from crude or semifinished materials. It includes the finer processes of metallurgy, the fractional distillation of petroleum into its commercial products, and the purifying of cane, beet, and maple sugar , marketing and transportation assets - including the Unocal brand - to Connecticut-based Tosco Corp. for $2 billion in 1997. Tosco continued to market the Unocal 76 brand until it was bought by Phillips Petroleum Corp. for $9.3 billion in 2001. Later that year Phillips bought Conoco Corp. for $15.4 billion and the Unocal name eventually disappeared with the new company ConocoPhillips, marketing the brand as 76 service stations while keeping the ball logo that became a favorite decoration on car antennas and a familiar sight in the parking lot behind center field at Dodger Stadium • • [ . While many consumers still make a connection between Unocal and 76, the ChevronTexaco deal will have little effect on retail competition, said industry expert Trilby Lundberg, president of the Lundberg Survey Inc. ``It does not affect the consumer because the Unocal (brand) has been sold and resold,'' she said. And ConocoPhillips is an aggressive price competitor these days, she said. ChevronTexaco's deal for Unocal does expand the company's operations in the Gulf of Mexico Noun 1. Gulf of Mexico - an arm of the Atlantic to the south of the United States and to the east of Mexico Golfo de Mexico Atlantic, Atlantic Ocean - the 2nd largest ocean; separates North and South America on the west from Europe and Africa on the east . Oil and gas from there usually ends up as products in West Coast markets. Getting Unocal's production assets will make ChevronTexaco more competitive globally and that will be a benefit for consumers, Lundberg said. But the gasoline gasoline or petrol, light, volatile mixture of hydrocarbons for use in the internal-combustion engine and as an organic solvent, obtained primarily by fractional distillation and "cracking" of petroleum, but also obtained from natural gas, by retail universe is shrinking. Between 1995 and 2001 the number of competitors slipped from eight to seven and the independent share of the market, usually the least expensive, fell to 7 percent from 20 percent, the level it had been at since 1980, according to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. the latest figures from the California Energy Commission The California Energy Commission is California’s primary energy policy and planning agency. Created in 1974 and headquartered in Sacramento, the Commission has responsibility for activities that include forecasting future energy needs, promoting energy efficiency through . And while the number of stations seems to be declining, the number of pumps is probably not. ``It may be a situation where we have as many pumps but they're in fewer gas stations. The market certainly has moved that way,'' said commission spokesman Rob Schlichting. However, California Attorney General The California Attorney General is the State Attorney General of the government of the state of California in the USA. The officer's duty is to ensure that "the laws of the state are uniformly and adequately enforced" (California Constitution, Article V, Section 13. Bill Lockyer William Westwood "Bill" Lockyer (born May 8, 1941) is the current State Treasurer of California. Prior to this, he served as California's Attorney General and head of the Department of Justice for the U.S. state of California. aggressively reviews these kinds of deals for anti-competitive measures. Even though Unocal no longer has any retail operations, the office will still assess the transaction to determine whether a review is necessary, said spokesman Tom Dresslar. Gregory J. Wilcox, (818) 713-3743 greg.wilcox(at)dailynews.com |
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