Global Lead Network: The Secret History of Lead: Ethyl-Octel Family Tree
Current Initiatives
The Secret History of Lead: A Special Report from The Nation
Ethyl-Octel Family Tree
The Ethyl Gasoline Corporation, a joint venture of GM and Standard Oil, founded Ethyl Export in England in 1930 to handle foreign business. Additional outposts were opened in Italy, France and Germany, and in 1938 Ethyl Export became the Associated Ethyl Company. The company was formed to control TEL production throughout Britain and France, and its primary goal was to expand the use of TEL, which it did by the clever expedient of making shareholders out of six leading oil companies—BP, Shell, Esso (as Standard Oil of New Jersey was known in England), Mobil, Chevron and Texaco—as well as General Motors. The Third World market fell in line after World War II.
In 1961 Europe’s Associated Ethyl changed its name to Associated Octel Company Limited, reflecting the fact that Ethyl and Octel were now competitors for European and Latin American business. In 1962 Ethyl was sold by GM and Standard Oil to the Gottwald family of Richmond, Virginia, owners of Albemarle Paper, who continue to trade in TEL from their headquarters in Richmond. Other US competitors—Du Pont, Nalco and PPG—have wound down their TEL businesses in recent years.
After World War II Octel grew to become one of the world’s largest TEL suppliers. Today, on the outskirts of Liverpool, England, it operates one of only three TEL manufacturing facilities remaining in the world—the others are in Germany and Russia. Octel, which supplies Ethyl with all of its lead under long-term agreement subject to a recent decree settling FTC price-fixing charges, now supplies 80 percent of the world’s TEL.
In 1989 Octel was sold to Great Lakes Chemical of West Lafayette, Indiana, makers of bromine and brominated chemicals, including EDB, the chemical scavengers used in ethyl gasoline to clear lead deposits from engines. In 1997 Great Lakes Chemicals spun off Octel into a separate company, which in 1998 was sold for $430 million to a highly leveraged management team led by Octel’s managing director (now CEO), Dennis Kerrison.
J.L.K.
