How it started
Origin
Gasolin was founded on 23 March 1920 as Olea Mineralölwerke AG in Frankfurt, taking over the Deutsche Schmiermittel GmbH (German lubricant company).
The purpose of the company was "acquisition, construction and operation of plants and enterprises aimed at the extraction, production, processing, recycling, storage, transport and trade of fuels of all kinds, lubricants, technical oils and greases, petroleum, tar and their reprocessing products, bitumen and related substances and other chemical products".
From 1922 it operated under the name Oleawerke AG für Mineralöl-Industrie based in Frankfurt (Main), from December 1923 based in Berlin. By this time, it had already taken over Süddeutsche Oel- und Melanolwerke GmbH, based in Freiburg im Breisgau.
The Stinnes era
In June 1923, Hugo Stinnes took over A. Riebeck'sche Montanwerke AG, which mainly owned mines and shares in mines in the Halle (Saale) area and Weißenfels-Zeitz; it also owned oil concessions in Argentina as well as mineral oil, paraffin, candle and montan wax factories. From them, he formed the Hugo Stinnes-Riebeck Montan- and Oelwerke AG, in which he bundled his oil interests. In 1923/1924 he acquired Oleawerke, which had refineries in Frankfurt (Main) and Freiburg, which took over the distribution of the entire brown-coal (lignite) production of A. Reibeck'sche Montanwerke, as well as the petrol refinery at Dollbergen, and the AG für Petroleumindustrie (Api) in Berlin. In addition, he acquired the majority of mining rights for the Concordia mine near Nachterstedt and the Messel mine near Darmstadt, in order to strengthen his oil interests.
From Wikipedia’s article on Gasolin, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.2