Atlantic Richfield Co

Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO) was a major American oil company. In our library its asbestos story is mainly as a buyer of Union Carbide's Calidria asbestos for oil-well drilling fluids, which Union Carbide packaged for it under the name Arcovis. Our library holds no record of an ARCO asbestos bankruptcy or trust; BP acquired it in 2000.

Draft. The history on this page was written from the documents in our library and has not yet been reviewed by a person.

History

ARCO was formed in 1966 by the merger of the Atlantic Refining Company and the Richfield Oil Corporation. This entry covers only its part in the asbestos record. Union Carbide said it acquired its Coalinga, California, mine site in 1958, and from 1963 until June 30, 1985, mined and sold a short-fiber chrysotile asbestos, at first as "Union Carbide Asbestos" and then under the name Calidria.⁷ Union Carbide's call reports refer to Montello, Inc., of Sand Springs and Tulsa, Oklahoma, as "our drilling mud distributor."⁸⁹

Arcovis

The 1971 order. A February 1971 Union Carbide call report records a telephone conversation with Ken Campbell of Montello. Campbell said he had just heard from ARCO's purchasing agent, who forewarned of an order for 2,520 bags (63 tons) of Arcovis for May shipment, to move by barge out of Seattle on June 1. The report added that Humble Oil, which had a joint financial interest with ARCO in North Slope drilling, had become interested in using Arcovis "in the same way as Arco."⁹ The report asked whether Union Carbide had enough Arcovis bags for an order that size.⁹

Dust tests. In February 1973 Union Carbide issued a report, which Montello sent out with its own cover letter, on asbestos dust when wet-refined asbestos was dumped into drilling fluids. One product tested was "a fine-ground hydrophobic asbestos known commercially as Arcovis 953." The report said its use was covered by U.S. Patent No. 3,618,680.³ In tests near Houston in September 1972, meant to simulate conditions on the North Slope, Arcovis 953 was dumped in a small enclosure, once with one side open and once with everything closed, "as occurs in the Arctic during extremely cold and windy weather."¹⁰ Discussing the granular Super-Visbestos dumped the next day, the report called Arcovis 953 "a more dusty product."¹¹ Its highest reading in any test, 5.5 fibers/cc, came from dumping the fine-ground product in the small enclosure. The report said that level was over 55 per cent of the allowable ceiling and "not typical of routine mud operations." It estimated eight-hour averages well under the OSHA limit.³ The report also said that "no representations are made" about the safety of the material "no matter how it is used."¹²

Later years. Union Carbide's 1980 list of Calidria customers includes Atlantic Richfield Co. at Great Bend, Kansas.¹³ A March 1983 Union Carbide call report on Montello noted that oil companies were moving away from mud service companies, and that "both Arco and Exxon" had mud engineer training programs under way.¹⁴ In September 1974 an Atlantic Richfield director of production attended a Johns-Manville "Asbestos & Health" meeting for customers in Dallas.¹⁵ ARCO Oil and Gas Company of Dallas is listed among those who commented to the EPA on its asbestos emission rules, in a 1990 EPA background document.¹⁶

Lawsuits

ARCO appears in our case library as an owner of workplaces where asbestos was used. In Maxwell v. Atlantic Richfield Co. (Wash. Ct. App. 2020), the court described asbestos-containing insulation, cement, tape and gaskets installed in 1971 and 1972 during construction of ARCO's Cherry Point refinery at Ferndale, Washington. The appeal concerned the builders, not ARCO, and the court upheld judgment for them under Washington's construction statute of repose.⁴ In Bordelon v. Atlantic Richfield Co. (W.D. La. 2017), the plaintiff alleged exposure from washing the work clothes of her husband, who had worked offshore for Atlantic Richfield from 1977 to 1982 around products such as drilling mud. The ruling dealt only with sending the case back to state court.⁵ No ARCO trust appears on our list of asbestos trusts.⁶

References

1. UC-1985: Union Carbide Chemicals & Plastics Co.'s Second Supplemental Objections and Responses to Plaintiff's Master Interrogatories, In re Asbestos Litigation, Dallas County (1995), p. 7
2. UC-5123: Union Carbide Corporation's Responses to Plaintiffs' Standard Interrogatories, In re Asbestos Cases, Boulder County, Colorado (2002), p. 9
3. UC-973: Montello, Inc. Transmittal of Union Carbide Report on Airborne Asbestos Dust in Drilling Fluid Operations Using Wet-Refined Super Visbestos (1973), p. 4
4. Maxwell v. Atlantic Richfield Co. (Wash. Ct. App. 2020)
5. Bordelon v. Atlantic Richfield Co. (W.D. La. 2017)
6. Asbestos trusts A–Z
7. UC-5123, p. 2
8. UC-709: Union Carbide Metals Division Call Reports and Reports of Call on Distributor Montello, Inc. (1973–1984), pp. 1–2
9. UC-311: H. B. Rhodes Call Report on Telecon with Ken Campbell of Montello, Inc. (1971), pp. 1–2
10. UC-973, p. 6
11. UC-973, p. 7
12. UC-973, p. 3
13. UC-245: Calidria Shipments to UCC Facilities and Customer Ship-To List (1980), p. 9
14. UC-709, p. 27
15. AIA-112: Johns-Manville Corporation, A Condensation of Environmental Facts on Asbestos and Health, with Customer Seminar Attendee Lists (1974), p. 56
16. UC-5195: EPA, National Emission Standards for Asbestos: Background Information for Promulgated Asbestos NESHAP Revisions (1990), p. 20

Court cases

3 court decisions in our case-law library name Atlantic Richfield Co as a defendant, newest first.

• Hickson v. Air & Liquid Systems Corporation (2022)
• Maxwell v. Atlantic Richfield Co. (2020)
• Bordelon v. Atlantic Richfield Co. (2017)

In the Union Carbide documents

Atlantic Richfield Co is named in 5 Union Carbide documents dated 1971 to 1983 (5 mentioned), from asbestos lawsuits over Union Carbide's Calidria asbestos. All are published in our collection.

• H. B. Rhodes Call Report on Telecon with Ken Campbell of Montello, Inc., on Arcovis Order, Oilbestos Lots and Imcobest/Visquick Inventory (1971) UC-311 (mentioned)
• Calidria Shipments to UCC Facilities and Customer Ship-To List (GLV, 1980) Union Carbide 538 (mentioned)
• Calidria Shipments to UCC Facilities and Customer Ship-To List (GLV, 1980) UC-245 (mentioned)
• F. L. Smith to D. F. Kapral on the Estimated Business Loss if the Asbestos TWA Limit Drops to 0.5 Fiber/cc (1983) UC-1348 (mentioned)
• Alphabetical List of Calidria Customer Names and Ship-To Locations, A through Z, with Montello Drilling-Mud Shipments (undated) UC-4115 (mentioned)

Names in the documents

The spellings documents use for Atlantic Richfield Co, OCR misreadings included, so a search for any of them finds this page: Arco · Atlantic-Richfield.

Where this comes from

This page brings together every document in our library that names Atlantic Richfield Co, across collections. Titles and affiliations are taken from the documents themselves, and units and subsidiaries are grouped under the company they belong to.