CITGO takes pride in helping our neighbors where we live and work.CITGO takes pride in helping our neighbors where we live and work.
The 1910s
Cities Service Company Created
1910 Henry L. Doherty creates Cities Service Company to supply gas and electricity to small public utilities.
1911 Swiss Psychologist Carl Jung founds Analytic Psychology
1912 Cities Service first enters oil and natural gas business in the Mid-Continent Field with the purchase of the Quapaw Gas Company
1912 Doherty and the Cities Service Company buy the extensive oil and gas holdings of the Barnsdall Properties
1912 British luxury liner Titanic, one of the largest ships in the world, strikes an iceberg and sinks with more than 1,500 lives lost.
1913 Henry Ford begins to use standardized interchangeable parts and assembly-line techniques in his automobile-manufacturing plant.
1913 Cities Service buys the Empire Gas Company.
1914 Venezuela’s first oil gusher was drilled near Lake Maracibo.
1914 World War I begins in Europe.
1914 The Panama Canal officially opened.
1914 The Empire subsidiary of Cities Service discovers and develops the Augusta and Eldorado fields in Kansas.
1915 Headquartered at 60 Wall Street in New York, Cities Service had 98 subsidiaries.
1915 A German submarine sinks the passenger liner Lusitania, killing 1,198 people on board, including 128 American citizens.
1916 Cities Service purchases its first refineries in Okmulgee, OK, Cushing, OK and Gainesville, TX.
1916 Spectacular nighttime lighting was installed by Doherty and Josef Pulitzer on Lady Liberty in New York Harbor.
1916 German-American theoretical physicist Albert Einstein publishes his “General Theory of Relativity.”
1916 Cities Service acquires the Crew Levick Company and its refinery on Petty’s Island in the Delaware River.
1917 United States enters World War I.
1917 Cities Service subsidiary Empire Gas & Fuel increases its fuel production from 3,000,000 barrels in 1915 to 36,000,000 in 1917.
1918 Cities Service subsidiaries produce half the oil used by the Allies in the final year of the war.
1918 World War I ends.
1919 Cities Service has seven refineries as of November 28.
1919 British aviators Arthur W. Brown and John W. Alcock make the first nonstop transatlantic flight.
1919 Henry L. Doherty uses motion pictures to convince business people to invest in Cities Service-the first such use of movies.

CITGO History

Through The Decades
The 1900s
The 1910s
The 1920s
The 1930s
The 1940s
The 1950s
The 1960s
The 1970s
The 1980s
The 1990s
The 2000s


 Text Color Key
Black Text =
Historical Events

Green Text =
Cities Service
Historical Events

Red Text =
Venezuelan
Historical Events