The story
The company was incorporated in 1956 as American Petrofina Inc. It had $10 million capitalization and headquarters in Dallas. Belgian parent company Petrofina owned the majority of American Petrofina's stock—but an American, Harry A. Jackson Jr., served as its first president.
It purchased the small petroleum companies Panhandle Oil Co. in 1956 and the American Liberty Co. of Dallas in 1957, in order to begin actual operations In June 2000, Fina Oil & Chemical Co. was renamed Atofina Petrochemicals Inc. and the headquarters moved to Houston Texas.
In 1963, the company acquired Cogsden Petroleum Corp. In 1968, it acquired Gulf Oil's Calumet City, Illinois facilities, to build a polystyrene plant. In 1973, Atofina acquired the Port Arthur Refinery from BP. In 1977, the company acquired polystyrene plants in Orange, California and Windsor, New Jersey. In 1984, it acquired ARCO's polypropylene plant in La Porte, Texas.
In 1985, the company changed the name of American Petrofina Co. of Texas, a wholly owned subsidiary of American Petrofina Inc., to Fina Oil and Chemical Co. In 1991, that name was changed to FINA Inc.
The La Porte Plant was expanded in 1995, becoming the largest single-site polypropylene plant in the world. In 1996, the other plant owned by FINA, the Carville Polystyrene Plant, took this position after its expansion. In 1997 FINA formed a joint venture with BASF to build world's largest naphtha steam cracker facility, opened in 2001.
In 1998, FINA was merged with its parent company of Petrofina SA, then Petrofina merged with Total S.A. in 1999. After the acquisition of Elf Acquitaine, the chemicals division of the company was named ATOFINA Petrochemicals Inc. On 1 October 2004, the name was changed to Total Petrochemicals USA, Inc.
From Wikipedia’s article on TotalEnergies Petrochemicals & Refining USA, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4