Oil Company Prospering
by October 20, 1997 12:00 am 172 views
About 90 percent of the gasoline sold in Northwest Arkansas reaches the area through the Razorback pipeline between Mr. Vernon, Mo., and Rogers.
The 67-mile, 8-inch underground pipeline was built in the late 1980s by Continental Ozark Inc. of Fayetteville. The line cost the company about $15 million to build.
Continental Ozark was sold in April 1995 to a group of investors in Denver who renamed the company TransMontaigne Oil Co. The terms of the sale weren’t disclosed.
Since the sale, TransMontaigne has doubled the company’s annual sales from about $500 million to more than $1 billion. TransMontaigne issued more than 25 million new shares of stock after the purchase raising about $117 million to expand the company’s operations.
With the purchase of Continental Ozark, which was founded in 1977, TransMontaigne acquired ownership of two other pipelines. The NORCO pipeline runs 452 miles through Chicago from Ft. Madison, Iowa, to Toledo, Ohio, and carries refined petroleum products. The other pipeline is known as CETEX and spans 220 miles across east Texas.
TransMontaigne also acquired a 27.75 percent ownership in a Lion Oil Co. refinery in El Dorado with the purchase.
TransMontaigne’s new assets since the acquisition of Continental Ozark include a natural gas gathering and processing operation that operates in North Dakota and Montana. The company bought the system last December for $71 million.
According to the company’s latest quarterly report to the SEC, which was filed Sept. 12, net revenue from product sales has increased 133 percent, or $252.6 million, over the same quarter last year. Net earnings are up 67 percent from $1.8 million to $3 million.
TransMontaigne is traded on the American Stock Exchange at about $18 a share.