History of Major players in Oil Industry

i. 1870 Standard Oil owned by American Rockefeller family—biggest competitor on oil market, produced oil from United States
1. Suppressed competitors through bribery and underselling…tactics still seen in OPEC today.
2. In 1911 the US court ruled to break Standard oil into over 30 companies because of Rockefeller’s illegal tactics—some of which are: Exxon, Mobile, Chevron, and Amoco.
ii. 1873 Nobel brothers– First Russian family to produce Baku oil
iii. 1883 Caspian and Black Sea Petroleum Company (BNITO) owned by French Rothschild family—becomes 2nd largest exporter of Russian petroleum.
iv. 1890 Royal Dutch Company found oil in Indonesia (East Sumatra).
v. 1897 Englishman, Marcus Samuel (designer of first oil tanker 1n 1892), named his oil company—Shell Transport and Trading Company.
vi. 1907 Royal Dutch and Shell merge (60:40 in favor of RD), yet maintain independent status of each other. Not until 2005 do the companies officially become one single company (Royal Dutch-Shell).
vii. 1912 TPC (Turkish Petroleum Company) is created under BP administration for the sole purpose of gaining access to Mesopotamia’s oil (soon to be Iraq).
viii. 1913 Converting the royal navy to oil meant that Britain needed to secure foreign oil, thus the government obtained control of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (AKA BP). Based out of Persia (now Iran) since 1901.
ix. 1948 ARAMCO (Arabian American Oil company) is formed in a partnership including Mobile, Chevron, Texaco, and Exxon. They later discover that they have control of the largest oil reserve in the world (To BP’s dismay).