Petrofina expanded its operations to the United States in 1956 with the purchase of Texas-based Panhandle Oil Company, which was headquartered in Wichita Falls, Texas, where the firm operated an oil refinery and marketed gasoline through service stations in Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico. American Petrofina, as the United States operation was called, further expanded its presence in the US through the purchase of several small oil companies, the largest being the Cosden Oil Company from W.R. Grace in 1963, which gave Fina a very large chain of service stations in Texas and New Mexico along with an oil refinery in Big Spring, Texas.