Standard Oil

This article is about the oil company that was dissolved in 1911. For successor companies with similar names, see Standard Oil (disambiguation).

Standard Oil
Company type
IndustryOil and gas
FoundedJanuary 2, 1882 (1882-01-02)
Founders
Defunct1911; 113 years ago (1911)
FateSplit into 39 different companies; Standard Oil of New Jersey (then the controlling entity) later became ExxonMobil
Successor39 successor entities
Headquarters
Key people
Products
Number of employees
60,000 (1909)[5]

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]

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 the United States' 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.

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  6. ^ Hidy, Ralph W., and Muriel E. Hidy, History of Standard Oil Company (New Jersey) Volume 1: Pioneering in Big Business, 1892–1911, (Harper and Brothers, 1955): 46.
  7. ^ Hidy, 219.
  8. ^ Hidy, 305.
  9. ^ Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power, (Simon and Schuster, 1991), 101-102.
  10. ^ Gibb, George S. and Evelyn H. Knowlton, History of Standard Oil Company (New Jersey) Volume 2: The Resurgent Years, 1911–1927, (Harper and Brothers, 1956): 6-7.