Relaunching

Marathon Oil Corp. has completed the spinoff of its refinery arm and is now an independent upstream operator. After relaunching three-year-old plans early this year, the board of directors in May voted to spin off the refinery operations into newly formed Marathon Petroleum Corp. (MPC), which is headquartered in Findlay, OH (see NGI, Jan. 17; Feb. 9, 2009). Marathon Oil, as a global exploration and production company, will continue to be led by CEO Clarence Cazalot. The upstream business remains headquartered in Houston under a new logo and will operate and report through three segments: Exploration & Production, Oil Sands Mining, and Integrated Gas.