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 1940s
Lake Charles Refinery Constructed
1940 Ernest Hemingway writes For Whom the Bell Tolls.
1940 W.Alton Jones becomes President of Cities Service.
1940 Cities Service begins stripping itself of 166 utility subsidiaries in compliance with the Public Utilities Holding Act of 1935.
1940 The now famous sign is erected in Kenmore Square in Boston. The sign, which was replaced with the CITGO logo after its creation in 1965, has become a landmark, familiar to Boston Marathon participants and Boston Red Sox fans.
1940 Engineer Peter Carl Goldmark introduces the first television that successfully produces clear color images.
1941 Cities Service buys the remaining shares of the Indian Territory Illuminating Oil Company.
1941 The Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor, plunging the United States into World War II.
1942 Construction begins on the Cities Service Refinery at Lake Charles, LA, at an estimated cost of $72 million.
1942 The "Rosie the Rivetor" publicity campaign persuades millions of American women to join the workforce.
1942 SS Cities Service Empire, an oil tanker owned by Cities Service, is sunk by a German U-boat off the Florida coast.
1943 French naval officer and marine explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau and French engineer Émile Gagnan perfect the aqualung-the predecessor to scuba tanks.
1943 Venezuela negotiated the first 50-50 oil deal with Shell Oil and Standard Oil of New Jersey.
1943 Cities Service completes construction of “the Big Inch”-the biggest, longest pipeline ever-to help supply petroleum products to the war effort.
1944 Congress passes the GI Bill, a bill guaranteeing various benefits, including education allowances and home, farm, and business loans, for military service veterans.
1944 Construction began on the Cities Service Lake Charles Refinery, which would eventually become the fourth-largest in the country with a 425,000-barrels-per-day capacity.
1944 Cities Service refineries process 53 million barrels of crude oil to fuel the war effort.
1945 By the end of World War II, Cities Service oil tankers had delivered 32 million barrels of oil to military forces around the globe.
1945 First atomic bombs dropped on Japan.
1945 World War II ended.
1946 The 80-feet long and 8-feet high computer ENIAC is built.
1946 Cities Services partners with other oil companies to form joint exploration and production company in the Gulf of Mexico.
1947 Tennessee Williams writes A Streetcar Named Desire.
1948 Milton Berle became the first major American television star as Uncle Miltie.
1949 The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was formed.
1949 The Cit-Con Lubricants and Wax Refinery, a joint venture between Cities Service and Conoco is built. It was 65 percent owned and operated by Cities Service.

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