Peters acquired a minority stake in Howard Hughes' Hughes Tool Company, to which was later sold in 1972. In 1967 the General American Oil Company merged with its affiliate Premier Petrochemical of Pasadena, Texas. In late 1984, Mesa Power LP Co., led by T. Boone Pickens Jr., attempted a hostile takeover of Phillips Petroleum. after Mesa failed, Carl Icahn attempted a separate hostile takeover. Phillips remained an independent company but recapitalized with greater debt. This large debt caused Phillips Petroleum to begin selling many of its assets, including refineries, and led to the 2002 merger with Conoco. Phillips Petroleum Corp. and Chevron Corp. combined their worldwide chemical businesses in 2000 to form a new company, Chevron Phillips Chemical Corp., LLC. This excluded Chevron's oronite additives, which remained with its former parent. Chevron Phillips is headquartered in The Woodlands, Texas. Accidents 1980 North Sea accident The Alexander L. Kielland, a drilling rig operating in the Ekofisk gas field of the North Sea, capsized on 27 March 1980. The incident killed 123 people. The rig was owned by a Norwegian firm, Stavanger Drilling, and was chartered by Phillips Norway, a subsidiary of Phillips Petroleum Co. Survivors and relatives of the deceased sued Phillips Petroleum Co. for damages in federal court in Ohio, but the trial court dismissed the case, and on appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, the appellate court agreed that Ohio courts had no jurisdiction in the case, even though the defendant did business in the state. The verdict was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which refused to hear the case. Phillips explosion of 1989 The Pasadena site was home to the 1989 Phillips Explosion, which killed 23 employees and contractors and injured 314 after cost-cutting efforts by the company. The initial explosion was equivalent to 2.4 tons of TNT exploding, damaging the homes of residents within a six-mile radius of the refinery. The initial explosion mushroom cloud was visible to area residents within a 15-mile radius of the site. Phillips explosion of 1999 Two contractors were killed and three men were injured in an explosion on the morning of Wednesday, 23 June 1999, at Phillips Petroleum Co.'s K-Resin (styrene butadiene copolymer) plant in its chemical complex in Pasadena, Texas. An alarm sounded at 11:30 am when the blast occurred and a fire erupted. It took more than an hour for Phillips' onsite fire