Caltex History & Journey | Caltex Malaysia

One journey. Almost eighty years in the making.

Since 1936, Caltex has been on a journey with only one destination – the satisfaction of our customers. 

The Caltex Star, our symbol of quality, value and service, is also a constant reminder of our commitment to you. To renew your drive. To do the best we can to help you meet the needs of your journey. To recharge and refuel, not just your vehicle but your being.

In addition to our accessible locations, modern facilities, high-quality products, and fast and friendly service, we’re always on the lookout for new partnerships that can deliver an even greater range of conveniences for you.

Because at Caltex, our journey has only one destination. You.

A consumer poll of 6,000 respondents is conducted to determine Malaysia’s favourite brands in the prestigious Putra Brand Awards. We win Bronze in the Automotive Fuel category.

As energy demand growth strengthens, our operating and efficiency gains pay off in a significant earnings improvement. On the verge of our 70th anniversary, Caltex’s position is solid, meriting Forbes’ description of the company as “the jewel in [Chevron’s] crown.”

The Chevron-Texaco merger fosters many natural synergies with Caltex, including shared standards of performance and operational excellence geared to being a consistent leader in the marketplace.

This prestigious award recognises our success in transforming ourselves from a geographically-focused organisation to one that operates along functional business lines, placing fast and creative problem-solving, high-tech marketing and old-fashioned elbow grease first.

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With this addition, the city becomes the leading supplier of Asia’s second-fastest growing fuel.

We cater mainly to motorcycles, and at the same time, develop markets for lubricants and asphalt. Other new development areas include Laos and Cambodia.

This reflects our keen understanding of customer needs and changing habits in a fluid and increasingly competitive marketplace. We also underscore a business and social partnership in a growing region of the world.

This campaign plays up both the growing number of Caltex retail stations as well as Star Marts. Underlying these changes are the company’s brand values, which focus on helping people achieve their goals through simple but important solutions for their immediate needs.

Three key petroleum products, Havoline Energy, Vortex fuels and Delo engine oils are launched to an Asian marketplace that is still recovering from a painful economic crisis. This does well to further solidify Caltex’s brand identity by giving customers the new, innovative products they need.

We drop ‘Petroleum’ from our name, changing it to Caltex Corp., to accommodate the non-petroleum products that are becoming a growing source of revenue.

We launch our corporate and retail identity programme, the Delta Star, featuring a distinctive five-point star with a dynamic delta at its centre and a new red, white and blue colour combination. The blazing red Delta is designed into the new Caltex Star to make it unique and convey a sense of movement, continual change and dynamism to the company’s customers and key partners. The new logo is designed for maximum visual impact, especially at retail sites.

The Yocheon Refinery is expanded, with innovative operating methods that enable it to convert lower-value refined products into higher-value petrochemicals, such as polypropylene, benzene and paraxylene.

This increases its capacity by 60,000 barrels per day and includes the installation of a Residuum Fluid Cracking unit that allows for increased production of diesel and lighter products.

To upgrade our network in key marketing areas, we build and renovate retail outlets across Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, South Africa and Thailand.

As part of our efforts to streamline operations, we sell our 50 per cent interest in Nippon Petroleum Refining Co., Ltd. We continue our relationship with Nippon Oil, emphasising trading, logistics, and the marketing of bunker and aviation fuels and lubricants.

“All of the oil majors are looking to the Far East for growth,” writes Forbes’ Toni Mack and Andrew Tanzer. “With Caltex, Chevron and Texaco are already there and sitting pretty,” selling more gasoline, diesel and other refined products in Asia than any other Western company.

These upgrades include the $1.7 billion, 130,000-barrel-a-day Star Refinery in Map Ta Phut, Thailand, which is a leader in design, safety features and pollution controls.

A historian states that across all 56 countries where we operate, our “reputation as a responsible corporate citizen and as a fair employer has never been tarnished in any corner of the globe where the Caltex banner flies. This is the company’s highest idea, its proudest legacy and its most cherished birthday gift.”

In moving our headquarters from New York (which is on the Eastern Time zone) to Dallas (on the Central Time zone), our logistics and trading staff in Dallas and Singapore is able to meet the needs of affiliated companies and customers on a 24-hour-a-day basis worldwide– using high-speed communications equipment to buy, sell and exchange crude and product cargoes.

The campaign includes new signage, modernised designs and bolder colour schemes for our stations and trucks. Our station canopies display a white star on a red background with white stripes – also known as ‘energy lines’ – that run diagonally across one corner. Our name, ‘Caltex’, is imprinted in black on a red background in a customised typeface.

Our journey around the world continues with our first trading office in Singapore, as well as 17 refineries globally and a total capacity of about 1.4 million barrels of oil a day.

With this change, we become a trading company dealing on the open market.

As the founder signatory of the anti-apartheid Sullivan Principles for corporations in South Africa, we provide support for education, career promotion, subsidised home mortgages and other aid programmes for native South Africans.

The Yosa Refinery in South Korea grows from 76,000 to 350,000 barrels a day, and becomes the largest plant in our system.

Through a global advertising campaign, we demonstrate how we live up to our promise “to employ, train, and advance citizens of each and every country where the Caltex Star shines.”

However, Arab oil embargoes and the nationalisation of company-owned assets during the 1970s deprive us of our traditional crude sources in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.

Throughout its marketing area, the company had always been identified with the name ‘Caltex’ in the mind of consumers.

To begin our journey in South Korea, we enter a joint venture with Lucky Chemical Goldstar Group to form the Honam Oil Refinery Co. Ltd., which constructs Yosa Refinery, the nation’s second refinery at Yosu. Together, we go on to operate a network of 200 service stations, gaining 30 per cent market share.

When Texaco decides to extend its interests in the Western hemisphere, it reduces the size of Caltex’s global operations but leaves us even more focused on the area east of Suez – where we have the most experience, cultivated relationships and profitable operations.

Our new Kurnell Refinery in Australia processes and distributes the increasing production from Caltex Pacific Indonesia’s Minas and Duri fields.

This refinery sits on a 300-acre site along the waters of Batangas Bay, about 72 miles south of Manila, and is also our largest single investment to date.

Unlike most Western corporations that prefer controlling interest, we enter into 50-50 partnerships with refineries and marine vessels in Japan.

We also boost manufacturing of lubricating oil and asphalt sales and dramatically increase our refining capacity as we have access to 150,000 barrels a day from the Bahrain Refinery as well as an additional 27,000 barrels a day from California Arabian Standard Oil Co.’s Ras Tanura Refinery in Saudi Arabia for growing markets east of Suez. In this 1948 photograph, barrels of oil from Bahrain are loaded onto a Caltex tanker for shipment to Eastern Hemisphere markets.

We also add fuel oil and diesel fuel bulk terminals in Singapore, Colombo, Shanghai, Suez, Hong Kong and Durban, and open or renovate hundreds of service stations.

One company had the oil, the other had the markets. On June 30, 1936, California Texas Oil Co., Ltd. (Caltex) is created as a joint and equal venture between Standard Oil Co. (Socal, later Chevron) of California and The Texas Co. (Texaco). The Texaco Star is already a hallmark of quality, service and reliability. Therefore, the Caltex logo – comprising a red star intersected by the word “CALTEX” in black letters – is only a subtle departure from the Texaco logo of that time.