Editing Citgo (section)

===Demise of Cities Service and birth of Citgo Petroleum Corporation===
In 1982, [[T. Boone Pickens]], founder of Mesa Petroleum, offered to buy Cities Service Company. Citgo responded by offering to buy Mesa,<ref name="nocera198210">{{Cite magazine |last=Nocera |first=Joseph |date=October 1982 |title="It's Time To Make a Deal" |url=https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/its-time-to-make-a-deal/ |access-date=2024-05-22 |magazine=Texas Monthly |language=en}}</ref> which was the first use of what became known as the ''[[Pac-Man defense|Pac-Man]]'' take-over defense; i.e., a counter-tender offer initiated by a takeover target. Cities Service also threatened to dissolve itself by incremental sales rather than being taken over by Mesa, stating that it believed that the pieces would sell for more than Pickens was offering for the whole.  Cities Service Company located what they thought would be a "white knight" to give them a better deal and entered into a merger agreement with [[Gulf Oil]] Corporation.  Late in the summer of 1982, Gulf Oil terminated the merger agreement claiming that Cities Service's reserve estimates were over-stated.  Over fifteen years of litigation resulted.  (For a more detailed discussion of the Cities Service vs. Gulf Oil litigation, see [[Gulf Oil#Demise]].)  Ironically, two years later, Gulf Oil itself would collapse as a result of a Pickens-initiated takeover attempt.

In the chaos that ensued after Gulf Oil's termination of its deal, Cities Service eventually entered into a merger agreement with, and was acquired by, [[Occidental Petroleum Corporation]]—a deal that was closed in the fall of 1982. That same year, Cities Service Company transferred all of the assets of its Refining, Marketing and Transportation division (which comprised its refining and retail petroleum business) into the newly formed Citgo Petroleum Corporation subsidiary, to ease the divestiture of the division, which Occidental had no interest in retaining. Pursuant to an agreement entered into in 1982, Citgo and the Citgo and Cities Service brands were sold by Occidental in 1983 to [[Southland Corporation]], original owners of the [[7-Eleven]] chain of [[convenience store]]s.