[2] In 1927, Phillips started up its first petroleum refinery in Borger, Texas, designed to produce gasoline as an automotive fuel.

[12] Phillips then divested itself of the Panhandle Eastern Pipeline Interest, but remained a major supplier of natural gas.

[2] After the war, it formed a subsidiary, Phillips Chemical Co., which entered the fertilizer business by producing anhydrous ammonia from natural gas.

The company acquired over 170 oil wells, several refineries and the assets of the General American Finance System and its subsidiaries.

In 1967 the General American Oil Company merged with its affiliate Premier Petrochemical of Pasadena, Texas.

In late 1984, Mesa Power LP Co., led by T. Boone Pickens Jr., attempted a hostile takeover of Phillips Petroleum.

[17] This large debt caused Phillips Petroleum to begin selling many of its assets, including refineries, and led to the 2002 merger with Conoco.

[18] The Alexander L. Kielland, a drilling rig operating in the Ekofisk gas field of the North Sea, capsized on 27 March 1980.

[19] The Pasadena site was home to the 1989 Phillips Explosion, which killed 23 employees and contractors and injured 314 after cost-cutting efforts by the company.

The initial explosion was equivalent to 2.4 tons of TNT exploding, damaging the homes of residents within a six-mile radius of the refinery.

Two contractors were killed and three men were injured in an explosion on the morning of Wednesday, 23 June 1999, at Phillips Petroleum Co.'s K-Resin (styrene butadiene copolymer) plant in its chemical complex in Pasadena, Texas.

[20] Those killed were 24-year-old Juan Martinez and his uncle Jose Inez Rangel, who were performing a hydrostatic test on a pipe until they were burned to death by 500 °F molten plastic.

[23] Today, the Pasadena facility only manufactures high-density polyethylene (HDPE) [24] This complex employs 750 workers for the production of specialty chemicals, including 150 operations and maintenance personnel.