ExxonMobil, an American multinational oil and gas corporation presently based out of Texas, has had one of the longest histories of any company in its industry. A direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, the company traces its roots as far back as 1866 to the founding of the Vacuum Oil Company, which would become part of ExxonMobil through its own merger with Mobil during the 1930s. The present name of the company comes from a 1999 merger of Standard Oil's New Jersey and New York successors, which adopted the names Exxon and Mobil respectively throughout the middle of the 20th century. Because of Standard Oil of New Jersey's ownership over all Standard Oil assets at the time of the 1911 breakup, ExxonMobil is seen by some as the definitive continuation of Standard Oil today.
Today, ExxonMobil is the largest investor-owned oil and gas company in the world by revenue and market capitalization. The company is frequently included near the top of the Fortune 500 and Fortune Global 500, and trails only Saudi Aramco in market capitalization among all the world's energy firms.
Standard Oil (1870–1911)
Origins Both Exxon and Mobil were descendants of Standard Oil, established by John D. Rockefeller and partners in 1870 as the Standard Oil Company of Ohio. In 1882, it together with its affiliated companies was incorporated as the Standard Oil Trust with Standard Oil Company of New Jersey and Standard Oil Company of New York as its largest companies. The Anglo-American Oil Company was established in the United Kingdom in 1888. In 1890, Standard Oil, together with local ship merchants in Bremen established Deutsch-Amerikanische Petroleum Gesellschaft (later: Esso A.G.). In 1891, a sale branch for the Netherlands and Belgium, American Petroleum Company, was established in Rotterdam. At the same year, a sale branch for Italy, Società Italo Americana pel Petrolio, was established in Venice.
Scrutiny and litigation The Standard Oil Trust was dissolved under the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1892; however, it reemerged as the Standard Oil Interests. In 1893, the Chinese and the whole Asian kerosene market was assigned to Standard Oil Company of New York in order to improve trade with the Asian counterparts. In 1898, Standard Oil of New Jersey acquired controlling stake in Imperial Oil of Canada. In 1899, Standard Oil Company of New Jersey became the holding company for the Standard Oil Interests.
The anti-monopoly proceedings against Standard Oil were launched in 1898. The reputation of Standard Oil in the public eye suffered badly after publication of Ida M. Tarbell's classic exposé The History of the Standard Oil Co. in 1904, leading to a growing outcry for the government to take action against the company. By 1911, with public outcry at a climax, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States that Standard Oil must be dissolved and split into 34 companies, with two of them becoming Standard Oil Company of New Jersey (Jersey Standard for short) and Standard Oil of New York (Socony for short).
Standard Oil Company of New Jersey (1911–1999)
Standard Oil Company of New Jersey (1911–1973)
Over the next few decades, Jersey Standard grew significantly. John Duston Archbold was the first president of Jersey Standard. Archbold was followed by Walter C. Teagle in 1917, under whose presidency Jersey Standard became the largest oil company in the world. In 1919, Jersey Standard acquired a 50% share in Humble Oil & Refining Co., a Texas oil-producer. In 1920, it was listed on the New York Stock Exchange. In the following years it acquired or established Tropical Oil Company of Colombia (1920), Standard Oil Company of Venezuela (1921; merged with Creole Petroleum in 1928 to become the operating subsidiary), and the Creole Petroleum Corporation (majority interest acquired in 1928).
Jersey Standard became a shareholder in the Iraq Petroleum Company at the end of the 1920s and acquired a 30% stake in ARAMCO in 1948.
In the Asia-Pacific region, Jersey Standard established through its Dutch subsidiary an exploration and production company Nederlandsche Koloniale Petroleum Maatschappij in 1912. In 1922, it found oil in Indonesia and in 1927, it built a refinery in Sumatra. It had oil production and refineries but no marketing network.
In 1924, Jersey Standard and General Motors pooled their tetraethyllead-related patents and established the Ethyl Gasoline Corporation. In 1927, Jersey Standard signed a 25-years cooperation agreement with IG Farben for the coal hydrogenation research in the United States. Jersey Standard assumed this cooperation to be beneficial as it believed the United States oil reserves to be exhausted in the near future and that the coal hydrogenation would give an access for producing synthetic fuels. It erected synthetic fuel plants in Bayway, Baton Rouge, and Baytown (unfinished). The interest in hydrogenation evaporated after discovery of the East Texas Oil Field. As a part of the cooperation between Jersey Standard and IG Farben, a joint company, Standard I.G. Company, was established with Jersey Standard having a stake of 80%. IG Farben transferred rights to the hydrogenation process outside of Germany to the joint venture in exchange of $35 million stake of Jersey Standard shares. In 1930, the joint company established Hydro Patents Company to license the hydrogenation process in the United States. The agreement with IG Farben gave to Jersey Standard access to patents related to polyisobutylene which assist Jersey Standard to advance in isobutolene polymerization and to produce the first butyl rubber in 1937. As the agreement with IG Farben gave to the German company a veto right of licensing chemical industry patents in the United States, including patent for butyl rubber, Jersey Standard was accused of treason by senator Harry S. Truman. In 1941, it opened the first commercial synthetic toluene plant.
Upon the merger of Socony and Vacuum Oil, some suggested that Jersey Standard and Standard Oil of California merge to maintain dominance in the oil industry, though no serious moves were ever made by either side.
In 1932, Jersey Standard acquired foreign assets of the Pan American Petroleum and Transport Company. In 1937, its assets in Bolivia were nationalized, followed by the nationalization of its assets in Mexico in 1938.
Since the 1911 Standard Oil Trust breakup, Jersey Standard used the trademark Esso, a phonetic pronunciation of the initials "S" and "O" in the name Standard Oil, as one of its primary brand names. However, several of the other Standard Oil spinoffs objected to the use of that name in their territories, and successfully got the U.S. federal courts in the 1930s to ban the Esso brand in those states. In those territories where the ban was in force, Jersey Standard instead marketed its products under the Enco or Humble names.
In the early stages of World War II, some of Standard Oil of New Jersey's product supplied the fuel-poor Axis powers.
In 1947, Jersey Standard and Royal Dutch Shell formed the joint venture for oil and gas exploration and production in the Netherlands. In 1948, Jersey Standard acquired interests in the Arab-American Oil Company (Aramco).
Humble Oil became a wholly owned subsidiary of Jersey Standard and was reorganized into the United States marketing division of Jersey Standard in 1959. In 1967, Humble Oil purchased all remaining Signal stations from Standard Oil Company of California (today known as Chevron) In 1969, Humble Oil opened a refinery in Benicia, California, of which today is owned by Valero Energy.Benicia
In Libya, Jersey Standard made its first major oil discovery in 1959.
Exxon Chemical Company (originally named Enjay Chemicals) was established in 1965.
In 1955, when Fortune released its first Fortune 500 list, Jersey Standard both before and after it rebranded as Exxon was one of the top five companies on Fortune 500 between the first edition of the list and the year of its merger with Mobil and reaching the #1 spot on the list a few years between 1970 and 1995.
In 1965, Jersey Standard started to acquire coal assets through its affiliate Carter Oil (later renamed Exxon Coal, U.S.A.). For managing the Midwest and Eastern coal assets in the United States, the Monterey Coal Company was established in 1969. Carter Oil focused on the developing synthetic fuels from coal. In 1966, it started to develop the coal liquefaction process called the Exxon Donor Solvent Process. In April 1980, Exxon opened a 250-ton-per-day pilot plant in Baytown, Texas. The plant was closed and dismantled in 1982.
In late 1960s Jersey Standard task force was looking for projects 30 years in the future.
In April 1973, Exxon founded Solar Power Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary for manufacturing of terrestrial photovoltaic cells. After the 1980s oil glut Exxon's internal report projected that solar would not become viable until 2012 or 2013. Consequently, Exxon sold Solar Power Corporation in 1984.
In the late 1960s, Jersey Standard entered into the nuclear industry. In 1969, it created a subsidiary, Jersey Nuclear Company (later: Exxon Nuclear Company), for manufacturing and marketing of uranium fuel, which was to be fabricated from uranium concentrates mined by the mineral department of Humble Oil (later: Exxon Minerals Company). In 1970, Jersey Nuclear opened a nuclear fuel manufacturing facility, now owned by Framatome, in Richland, Washington. The company started surface mining of uranium ore in Converse County, Wyoming, in 1970, solution mining in 1972, and underground mining in 1977. Uranium ore processing started in 1972. The facility was closed in 1984.
Exxon Corporation (1973–1999)
In 1972, Exxon was unveiled as the new, unified brand name for all former Enco and Esso outlets. At the same time, the company changed its corporate name from Standard Oil of New Jersey to Exxon Corporation, and Humble Oil became Exxon Company, U.S.A. The rebranding came after successful test-marketing of the Exxon name, under two experimental logos, in the fall and winter of 1971–72. The marketing test began on October 4, 1971, in six U.S. cities, with signs replaced at service stations and full-page advertisements in the local newspapers."Humble to test brand name", Houston Post, September 21, 1971, page 17A.Full-page advertisement, Zanesville Times Recorder, October 4, 1971, page 4-B. Exxon was "one of hundreds of names that came out of a computer and was then tested linguistically, psychologically, and for design potential." Along with the new name, Exxon settled on a rectangular logo using red lettering and blue trim on a white background, similar to the familiar color scheme on the old Enco and Esso logos. The rectangular Exxon logo, with the blue strip at the bottom and red lettering with the two 'X's interlinked together, was designed by noted industrial stylist Raymond Loewy. The interlinked 'X's are incorporated in the modern-day ExxonMobil corporate logo; in mid-2016, as part of a corporate rebranding accompanying the launch of ExxonMobil's "Synergy" fuel products, the mixed-case Exxon wordmark from the ExxonMobil corporate logo became the brand's main logo. The current form of the Exxon logo was made on March 3, 1972, by New York-based Louis Liska. Exxon replaced the Esso, Enco, and Humble brands in the United States on January 1, 1973.Jersey Standard Takes Giant Step by William D. Smith on The New York Times, June 22, 1972