I imagine that it was before the split, but the thinking is that the split is very good for the upstream and not so good for the down stream people. Interestingly, one of companies that have expressed an interest in buying one of the CONOCO Phillips refineries is Walmart. Wouldn’t that set the leftists off in a tizzy? Imagine Walmart, not only selling gas, but refining their own gasoline.
BP has been trying to get out of the downstream end of the business for years but hasn’t been able to sell the refineries. Most of the oil companies would like to do the same thing.
Marathon spun off their refining about a year or so.