History
Exxon Mobil has its roots in the
Standard Oil company, which was split up in the early 1900s in an
antitrust battle.
Mobil came into being after a merger between
Vacuum and
Socony (Standard Oil Company Of New York), two former SO companies who took up the
Mobil name 23 years after the merger in 1954, when they became
Socony Mobil Oil-they did not fully drop the
Socony name until 1966. They became large through the acquisition of smaller oil companies, such as
Magnolia Petroleum. The
petrochemical part of their operations started in 1960, with the launch of the
Mobil Chemical Company.
Exxon started out as
Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey, or "
Jersey Standard". Like Mobil, they purchased large
shareholdings in other
oil companies and launched their petrochemical operations in the 1960s as
Exxon Chemical Company. In 1972, Jersey Standard trademarked
Exxon and became
Exxon Corporation. The name was selected by computer to match certain criteria, the details of which are under the node
Exxon.
In 1998, the two companies agreed to merge and form
ExxonMobil Corporation, and the merger was completed in 1999. The $82billion merger was waved through by the
US government, on the condition that the company sell 2,431
petrol stations, some
pipeline interests and a
refinery. The merger took place during a period of many oil industry mergers, such as the
Chevron/
Texaco merger, the
TotalFina/
Elf merger and the
BP/
Amoco merger. Despite this tightening up of the industry, ExxonMobil is still the world's biggest company, even outside the
petroleum industry.
Valdez
In late March 1989 the
oil tanker Exxon Valdez, the captain of which was
drunk at the time, ran aground. The drunk captain then tried to
wiggle the boat back out to sea, a bad move which if successful would probably have
capsized the boat.
More than 100 million
gallons of oil leaked out, but according to scientists it was moving slowly because of its viscosity and would have been easy to
contain. Exxon utimately failed to contain the resulting slick and it spread across hundreds of miles of ocean, delivering a blow to the local
salmon fisheries. ExxonMobil has fiercely contested any attempts by the
fishermen to get
compensation, and most of them have yet to receive any despite numerous court battles.
Controversy
In 2000, ExxonMobil Corporation were the biggest oil industry contributors to
President Bush's election fund, and this aroused suspicion within
environmental groups. Indeed, merely days after his election, President Bush abandoned the
Kyoto Treaty, calling it "
fatally flawed in
fundamental ways". Mere months beforehand, ExxonMobil had taken out ads calling the Kyoto Treaty "fatally
politicised" and "fundamentally flawed". Also, ExxonMobil seems to follow a path
contrary to other companies such as
BP or
Shell in that they refuse to invest in clean,
renewable energy sources such as
wind or solar power.
Sources
StopEsso.org
Exxon.com
Nodes elsewhere on E2
If anyone has any idea where the name
Esso comes from and when it was first used, please /msg me :)