What is "pennzoil"

Pennzoil is an American oil company founded in Los Angeles, California in 1913. In 1955, it was acquired by Oil City, Pennsylvania company South Penn Oil, a former branch of Standard Oil. In 1963, South Penn Oil merged with Zapata Petroleum; the merged company took the Pennzoil name. In 1968 United Gas Corporation became part of Pennzoil. (Although United Gas was a larger company, pre-merger, Pennzoil had successfully used a " leveraged buyout" strategy.) During the 1970s, the company moved its offices to Houston, Texas. In 1977 a spin-off company was formed called Pogo, which stood for Pennzoil Offshore Gas Operators.

Pennzoil was headquartered in Pennzoil Place in Downtown Houston during the 1970s. In 1999 Pennzoil's E&P business (known as PennzEnergy) was acquired by Oklahoma City-based Devon Energy and the [now known as] Pennzoil-Quaker was purchased by Royal Dutch/Shell Group to form SOPUS—Shell Oil Products US.