Texaco was an independent company until its refining operations merged into Chevron in 2001, at which time most of its station franchises were divested to Shell plc through its American division.

Men such as John W. ("Bet A Million") Gates invested in "certificates of interest" to an amount of almost ninety thousand dollars.

In 1936, the Texas Corporation purchased the Barco oil concession in Colombia, and formed a joint venture with Socony-Vacuum, now Mobil, to develop it.

Over the next three years the company engaged in a highly challenging project to drill wells and build a pipeline to the coast across mountains and then through uncharted swamps and jungles.

[13] During this time, Texaco also illegally supplied the fascist Nationalist faction in the Spanish Civil War with a total 3,500,000 barrels (560,000 m3) of oil.

[15] Also in 1936, marketing operations "East of Suez" (including Asia, East Africa, and Australasia) were placed into a joint venture with Standard Oil Company of California – Socal (now Chevron) – under the brand name Caltex, in exchange for Socal placing its Bahrain refinery and Arabian oilfields into the venture.

After the onset of World War II in 1939, Texaco's CEO, Torkild Rieber, admirer of Hitler, hired pro-Nazi assistants who cabled Berlin "coded information about ships leaving New York for Britain and what their cargoes were."

[18][19][20] Life Magazine portrayed Rieber's resignation as unfair, advocating that he only dined with Westrick, and lent him a company car.

In 1954, the company added the detergent additive Petrox to its "Sky Chief" gasoline, which was also souped up with higher octane to meet the antiknock needs of new cars with high-compression engines.

[25] In 1970, in response to increasingly-stringent federal vehicle emissions standards that would induce automakers to install catalytic converters requiring equipped vehicles to run on unleaded gasoline, Texaco introduced their first regular-octane no-lead gasoline at stations in the Los Angeles area and throughout Southern California.

At the end of 1981 and the beginning of 1982, members of the Medellín Cartel (including Pablo Escobar), the Colombian military, the U.S.-based corporation Texas Petroleum, the Colombian legislature, small industrialists, and wealthy cattle ranchers came together in a series of meetings in Puerto Boyacá, and formed a paramilitary organization known as Muerte a Secuestradores ("Death to Kidnappers", MAS) to defend their economic interests, and to provide protection for local elites from kidnappings and extortion.

[26][27][28] By 1983, Colombian internal affairs had registered 240 political killings by MAS death squads, mostly community leaders, elected officials, and farmers.

It was the largest racial-discrimination lawsuit settlement in the U.S. at the time, and was particularly damaging to Texaco's public relations when tapes were released of meetings with company executives planning to destroy incriminating evidence.

[3] As required by the FTC consent agreement,[40] Texaco's interest in the Equilon and Motiva joint ventures were sold to Shell.

[47] In 2010, Chevron ended retail operations in the Mid-Atlantic US, removing its brand from 450 stations in Delaware, Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, New Jersey, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, Washington, D.C.[48] Prior to the merger with Chevron, Texaco's headquarters was a 750,000-square-foot (70,000 m2) building in Harrison, in Westchester County, New York, near to White Plains.

It was one of the sponsors of NASCAR with many drivers, such as Davey Allison, Ernie Irvan, Dale Jarrett, Kenny Irwin Jr., Ricky Rudd, Jamie McMurray, Casey Mears, and Juan Pablo Montoya.

Their association with the team and its successor, Jaguar Racing, continued until the end of 2001, in the same timeline they also sponsored ITV's Formula 1 Coverage.

[citation needed] Texaco was long associated with the Metropolitan Opera as sole sponsor of its radio broadcasts for 63 years.

"[citation needed] Texaco was also the sponsor of the weekly Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts, which air to this day since its inception in 1931.

In the 1930s, comedian Ed Wynn hosted a half hour stand-up comedy/variety show on the NBC Radio Network, billed as "The Texaco Fire Chief", a reference to its regular grade gasoline.

[55] In a 1983 video for their song, Cruel Summer, members of girl group Bananarama are depicted as working as mechanics at a Texaco gas station.

The company was accused of extensive environmental damage from these operations, and faces legal claims from both private plaintiffs and from the government of Ecuador.

In turn, Texaco's owner Chevron claims that it was being unfairly targeted as a deep pocket defendant, when the actual responsibility lies with the government and its national oil company, Petroecuador.

[56] Texaco allegedly decided to forgo their standard drilling practices in favor for a minor savings on the cost to produce a barrel of crude oil (approximately $3/barrel).