Standard Oil
Standard Oil is the common name for a corporate trust in the petroleum industry that existed from 1882 to 1911. The origins of the trust lay in the operations of the Standard Oil Company (Ohio), which had been founded in 1870 by John D. Rockefeller. The trust was born on January 2, 1882, when a group of 41 investors signed the Standard Oil Trust Agreement, which pooled their securities of 40 companies into a single holding agency managed by nine trustees.[6] The original trust was valued at $70 million. On March 21, 1892, the Standard Oil Trust was dissolved and its holdings were reorganized into 20 independent companies that formed an unofficial union referred to as "Standard Oil Interests."[7] In 1899, the Standard Oil Company (New Jersey) acquired the shares of the other 19 companies and became the holding company for the trust.[8]
This article is about the oil company that was dissolved in 1911. For successor companies with similar names, see Standard Oil (disambiguation).Company type
- Business trust (1882–1892)
- New Jersey Holding Company (1899–1911)[1]
January 2, 1882
- John D. Rockefeller,
Co-Founder & Chairman - Stephen V. Harkness,
Co-Founder & Initial investor - Henry M. Flagler,
Co-Founder & Senior executive - William A. Rockefeller,
Co-Founder, Senior executive & New York Representative - Samuel Andrews,
Co-Founder, Chemist & Inaugural Chief of Refining Operations
1911
Split into 34 different companies; Standard Oil of New Jersey (then the controlling entity) later became ExxonMobil
- Cleveland, Ohio (1870–1885)
- New York City, New York (1885–1911)[2]
- John D. Archbold, Vice President
- Charles Pratt, Senior Executive
- Henry H. Rogers, Senior Executive
- Oliver H. Payne, Senior Executive
- Daniel O'Day, Senior Executive
- Jabez A. Bostwick, Senior Executive & First Treasurer
- William G. Warden,[3] Senior Executive
- Jacob Vandergrift,[4] Senior Executive
60,000 (1909)[5]
Jersey Standard operated a near monopoly in the American oil industry from 1899 until 1911 and was the largest corporation in the United States. In 1911, the landmark Supreme Court case Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States found Jersey Standard guilty of anticompetitive practices and ordered it to break up its holdings. The charge against Jersey came about in part as a consequence of the reporting of Ida Tarbell, who wrote The History of the Standard Oil Company.[9] The net value of companies severed from Jersey Standard in 1911 was $375 million, which constituted 57 per cent of Jersey's value. After the dissolution, Jersey Standard became America's second largest corporation after United States Steel.[10]
The Standard Oil Company (New Jersey), which was renamed Exxon in 1973 and ExxonMobil in 1999, remains the largest public oil company in the world. Many of the companies disassociated from Jersey Standard in 1911 remained powerful businesses through the twentieth century. These included the Standard Oil Company of New York, Standard Oil Company (Indiana), Standard Oil Company (California), Ohio Oil Company, Continental Oil Company, and Atlantic Refining Company.
Standard Oil's breakup split the company into 34 separate companies.[69] Several of these companies were considered among the Seven Sisters who dominated the industry worldwide for much of the 20th century, and both Standard Oil's direct and indirect descendants make up Big Oil.
Today, Standard Oil's influence is primarily concentrated in a few companies:
Many of today's largest oil and gas companies are or have acquired a descendant of Standard Oil. Moreover, many other companies have acquired or been created from Standard Oil descendants over time, including Unilever (which acquired Standard descendant Vaseline in 1987), TransUnion (created originally as a holding company for Standard descendant Union Tank Car) and Berkshire Hathaway (which later acquired Union Tank Car).[70][71]
One of 15 Chevron stations branded as "Standard" to protect Chevron's trademark; this one is in Paradise, Nevada.
A combination gasoline/diesel pump at an Exxon in Zelienople, Pennsylvania selling Exxon gasoline and "Esso Diesel".
BP continues to sell marine fuel under the Sohio brand at various marinas on Ohio waterways and in Ohio state parks in order to protect its rights in the Sohio and Standard Oil names. The Anderson Ferry Marina near Cincinnati, Ohio is pictured.
Station signage at an Exxon station in Columbus, Ohio featuring the Esso logo, while BP owns the rights to the Standard Oil name in Ohio.
Of the 34 "Baby Standards", 11 were given rights to the Standard Oil name, based on the state they were in. Conoco and Atlantic elected to use their respective names instead of the Standard name, and their rights would be claimed by other companies.
By the 1980s, most companies were using their brand names instead of the Standard name, with Amoco being the last one to have widespread use of the "Standard" name, as it gave Midwestern owners the option of using the Amoco name or Standard.
Three supermajor companies now own the rights to the Standard name in the United States: ExxonMobil, Chevron Corp., and BP. BP acquired its rights through acquiring Standard Oil of Ohio and merging with Amoco and has a small handful of stations in the Midwestern United States using the Standard name. Likewise, BP continues to sell marine fuel under the Sohio brand at various marinas throughout Ohio. ExxonMobil keeps the Esso trademark alive at stations that sell diesel fuel by selling "Esso Diesel" displayed on the pumps.
ExxonMobil has full international rights to the Standard name, and continues to use the Esso name overseas and in Canada. To protect its trademark, Chevron has one station in each state it owns the rights to be branded as Standard.[72] Some of its Standard-branded stations have a mix of some signs that say Standard and some signs that say Chevron. Over time, Chevron has changed which station in a given state is the Standard station.
In February 2016, ExxonMobil successfully asked a U.S. federal court to lift the 1930s trademark injunction that banned it from using the Esso brand in some states. Neither BP nor Chevron objected to the decision. ExxonMobil asked for it to be lifted primarily so it could have universal marketing material for its stations globally and, likewise, the Esso name returned to some minor station signage at both Exxon and Mobil stations.[73][74]
As of 2021, six states that have the Standard Oil name rights are not being actively used by the companies that own them. Chevron withdrew from Kentucky (home of the Standard Oil of Kentucky, which Chevron acquired in 1961) in 2010, while BP gradually withdrew from five Great Plains and Rocky Mountain states (Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Wyoming) since the initial conversion of Amoco sites to BP. As ExxonMobil has stations in all of these states, with the aforementioned minor signage ExxonMobil has de facto claimed the Standard trademark in these states, though they are still held by their respective rights holders.