13 Facts About ARCO

1. ARCO is a brand of gasoline stations currently owned by Marathon Petroleum after BP sold its rights.

2. From 1966 to 2000, the 'Atlantic Richfield Company', doing business as ARCO, was an independent American oil company with operations in the United States, Indonesia, the North Sea, the South China Sea, and Mexico.

3. ARCO was formed by the merger of East Coast–based Atlantic Refining and California-based Richfield Oil Corporation in 1966; the company's name is an acronym of the two companies' names.

4. In 1986, ARCO began to accept bank ATM cards at its stations by adding on a transaction fee of initially 10 cents for those sales while maintaining cash only sales at the previous low price.

5. ARCO having hired Bernard Eastlund led to conspiracy theories about weather control and warfare.

6. In March 1997, ARCO leased almost all the gas stations of the Santa Fe Springs, California based independent Thrifty Oil group of 250 stations found throughout California after a damaging price war which the independent Thrifty was unable to win.

7. Oil companies, such as BP, Shell, and ARCO began to look into photovoltaics.

8. In 1977, ARCO purchased Chatsworth-based Solar Technology International, renamed it ARCO Solar and moved it to Camarillo.

9. ARCO merged with Anaconda Copper Mining Company of Montana in 1977.

10. On 7 February 2008, the United States Environmental Protection Agency announced that prolonged litigation with ARCO ended when ARCO agreed to pay $187 million to finance natural resource restoration activities.

11. In 1980, ARCO became a sponsor of the 1984 Summer Olympics that were held in Los Angeles and had helped financed the refurbishing of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

12. Currently, the brand name ARCO is being used by Marathon Petroleum as a brand of gasoline service stations in the United States and Mexico.

13. ARCO is known for its low-priced gasoline compared to other national brands, mainly because of an early 1980s business decision to emphasize cost cutting and alternative sources of income (ampm).