Hooker Chemical

Company History: Hooker Chemical Company was an American chemical company that produced chlor-alkali products from 1903 to 1968. In 1922, Hooker bought the S. Wander & Sons company for the retail sales of lye and chlorinated lime. Hooker Chemical is best known for the chemical waste site Love Canal, which it sold in 1953, and led to a lengthy lawsuit several decades later.

The company was founded in 1903 as "The Development and Funding Company" by Elon Huntington Hooker, of Rochester, NY. Hooker created a company that used the Townsend cell to elecrolyse salt into chlorine and sodium hydroxide (NaOH), also known as "caustic soda" and "lye," in a chloralkali process. Elmer Sperry, founder of Sperry Electric, and Leo Baekeland, inventor of Bakelite and Velox photographic paper consulted for Hooker to improve the design of the cell.

The company was originally sited in Niagara Falls, NY because of the low cost electricity from the Niagara Falls power project (completed in 1895), the abundance of salt from nearby mines, and availability of water from the Niagara River. However, in 1929 Hooker built a new chloralkali plant in Tacoma Washington. Hooker also owned factories in Albany, NY.

Hooker Chemical Company was purchased by Occidental Petroleum Corporation in 1968.

Successor/Parent History: Occidental Petroleum Corporation (often abbreviated Oxy in reference to its ticker symbol) is an American company engaged in hydrocarbon exploration in the United States, the Middle East, and Colombia as well as petrochemical manufacturing in the United States, Canada, and Chile. It is organized in Delaware and headquartered in Houston. The company is ranked 722nd on the Forbes Global 2000 and 220th on the Fortune 500.

In 2018, the company was the 9th largest petroleum producer in Texas.

Brief History: The U.S. is a country of 50 states covering a vast swath of North America, with Alaska in the northwest and Hawaii extending the nation’s presence into the Pacific Ocean. Major Atlantic Coast cities are New York, a global finance and culture center, and capital Washington, DC. Midwestern metropolis Chicago is known for influential architecture and on the west coast, Los Angeles' Hollywood is famed for filmmaking.