Texaco Inc. is an American oil brand of the Chevron Corporation. Its flagship product is its fuel “Texaco with Techron”. It also owned the Havoline motor oil brand. Texaco was an independent company until its refining operations merged into Chevron Corporation in 2001, at which time most of its station franchises were divested to the Shell Oil Company. It began as the “Texas Fuel Company”, founded in 1902 in Beaumont, Texas, by Joseph S. Cullinan, Thomas J. Donoghue, Walter Benona Sharp, and Arnold Schlaet upon the discovery of oil at Spindletop. The Texas Fuel Company was not set up to drill wells or to produce crude oil. To accomplish this, Cullinan organized the Producers Oil Company in 1902, as a group of investors affiliated with The Texas Fuel Company. Men like John W. Gates invested in “certificates of interest” to an amount of almost ninety thousand dollars.