Buckeye Partners traces its roots to March, 1886, when The Buckeye Pipe Line Company was incorporated as a subsidiary of the Standard Oil Company. Buckeye became an independent publicly owned company after Standard Oil’s dissolution in 1911. Expansion into petroleum products transportation after World War II transformed the company into one of the nation's largest independent common carrier pipelines. In 1964, Buckeye was acquired by a subsidiary of the Pennsylvania Railroad, which later became The Penn Central Corporation. In December 1986, the company was reorganized into its current form as a publicly-traded master limited partnership. Buckeye Partners has continued to grow, adding refined products terminalling operations, contract pipeline operation and maintenance, natural gas storage, and refined products marketing to the array of services offered to our customers.

The Buckeye Pipe Line Company originally was established to supply refineries in northwestern Ohio with crude oil gathered from local production sources. During the 1930s and 1940s, the company expanded its crude oil operations and constructed a network of trunk lines that supplied refineries from Chicago to Buffalo. As local production declined and was replaced by crude supply from the Mid-Continent and Gulf Coast regions, Buckeye’s pipelines continued to function as key supply lines for refineries in its service territory.

Buckeye began its first refined products pipeline operations in the mid 1940s. The company built new products lines in Ohio and Indiana and converted older idle crude lines to refined products service to meet emerging needs for supplying gasoline and distillates to local consumption markets.

During the 1950s, Buckeye extended its Midwest products network and concurrently constructed a new products pipeline system in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York. During the 1960s and 1970s, the company built the first products pipeline through the streets of New York City in order to serve the three major airports and commercial customers in that metropolitan region. In 1977, the company acquired Jet Lines, Inc., a products pipeline system in New England. In the mid-1970s and early 1980s, Buckeye implemented a major capital investment program to increase its pipeline capacities, improve service to existing markets, and initiate service to new markets. This program included the addition of new pipelines, pumping equipment, tankage, and modern control equipment. In 1986, Buckeye further increased its refined products service through the acquisition of Laurel Pipe Line Company, which serves Pennsylvania markets from Philadelphia.

Buckeye entered the contract operations and maintenance business in 1999, with the acquisition of assets from Seagull Products Pipeline Corporation and Seagull Energy Corporation. These assets, which included pipeline operating agreements for major chemical companies in the Gulf Coast region, a 16-mile pipeline, and other related assets, were the beginning of the Patnership’s Buckeye Gulf Coast operations.

The company’s Buckeye Terminals subsidiary was formed in 2000. Terminal business operations began that year with the purchase of a petroleum products terminal in Taylor, Michigan, from BP, and six petroleum products terminals, located in New York and Pennsylvania, from Agway Energy Products.

In 2001, the Partnership expanded both its pipeline and terminals businesses with an asset acquisition from TransMontaigne. The assets purchased included approximately 500 miles refined petroleum products pipelines in Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois; 3.2 million barrels of pipeline storage and trans-shipment facilities in Hartsdale and East Chicago, Indiana and Toledo, Ohio; and four refined product terminals located in Bryan, Ohio, South Bend and Indianapolis, Indiana, and Peoria, Illinois.

Buckeye’s largest acquisition to date came in 2004 with the addition of five refined products pipelines and twenty-four petroleum products terminals. The pipeline systems and terminals, all located in the upper Midwest, were acquired from Shell Oil. The Partnership’s operations footprint in the region expanded significantly with this strategic addition of approximately 925 miles of pipelines, and the acquired terminals dramatically increased the Partnership’s refined products storage capacity and more than tripled Buckeye’s terminal throughput volumes.

In 2005, Buckeye again added to its pipeline and terminals businesses by purchasing a major pipeline system and terminals from ExxonMobil. With approximately 500 miles of pipelines and four additional terminals, these assets significantly expanded the company’s presence in the Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York market areas.

The pipeline business grew again with the 2006 acquisition of a 350-mile system from Wattenberg, Colorado to Bushton, Kansas. Acquired from BP Pipelines, the system carries raw mix natural gas liquids from several natural gas processing plants in the Front Range area of eastern Colorado.

The Partnership entered two new businesses in 2008. In January, Buckeye completed the purchase of Lodi Gas Storage, which owns and operates natural gas storage facilities in northern California. The facilities provide approximately 22 billion cubic feet of working gas capacity and serve natural gas demand in the San Francisco and Sacramento areas.

In February 2008, Buckeye acquired the wholesale refined products marketing operations of Farm & Home Oil Company. As the newest Partnership subsidiary, Buckeye Energy Services expects to continue Farm & Home’s business as one of the leading independent fuel distributors in the Mid-Atlantic region and to expand its operations in areas served by Buckeye’s existing pipeline and terminals network.

History and the oil industry have seen many changes in the more than 120 years since Buckeye’s original formation. Buckeye has survived, grown, and prospered through those many years by diligently seeking to provide excellent service to meet the changing needs of its customers. Throughout the years, the company has continually adapted itself to accommodate new industry standards as they emerged, ever-changing markets and business conditions, continuously evolving technologies, as well as the many operating and economic challenges that time presents. From its modest nineteenth century beginning as a local crude gathering subsidiary, Buckeye in the twentieth century transformed itself into one of the nation's largest independent common carrier refined products pipelines. Building on its successful reputation for excellent customer service, Buckeye has continued to prosper and grow to become a leading logistics service provider to the energy industry in the opening decade of the twenty-first century.