The Ohio Oil Company is now Marathon Petroleum, which includes both Marathon and Speedway filling stations.ª The following December, Forbes celebrated the undisputed Goliath in mobile communications. However, the oil fields in Northern California, Oregon, and Washington are stilled owned by BP. Later, BP sold the ARCO name and oil fields in Southern California to Tesoro, which were eventually purchased by Sunoco. AtlanticRichfield (ARCO), a merger of Standard's Atlantic and an independent company called Richfield, and Standard Oil of Indiana (Amoco) were eventually absorbed into BP as well. Standard Oil Company, also called Sohio, in effect, ceased to exist after being purchased by British Petroleum (BP) in 1987, although BP continued to sell gasoline under the Sohio brand name until 1991. In 1911, following the Supreme Court ruling, Standard Oil was broken into seven successor companies Standard Oil of New Jersey, Standard Oil of New York, Standard Oil of California, Standard Oil of Indiana, Standard Oil of Kentucky, The Standard Oil Company (Ohio), and The Ohio Oil Company. The Standard Oil Company of Ohio was the original company that Rockefeller established in 1862. Other companies used the Standard Oil name to profit off of the company's reputation, but these organizations were never part of the company formerly controlled by Rockefeller. Among these various companies were Standard Oil of Ohio, Standard Oil of Indiana, Standard Oil of New York, Standard Oil of New Jersey, Standard Oil of California, Standard Oil of Kentucky, Standard Oil of Iowa, Standard Oil of Minnesota, Standard Oil of Illinois, Standard Oil of Kansas, Standard Oil of Missouri, Standard Oil of Nebraska, and Standard Oil of Louisiana. In theory, these companies were no longer owned by a single person or operated by a single board of directors, but it appears that they still operated in conjunction with each other. The company then splintered into numerous subsidiaries. In 1911, the United States Supreme Court eventually ruled in this case that Standard Oil was a trust and had to cease to exist. While Ohio won the case, Standard Oil appealed the decision. In 1892, Ohio's attorney general filed suit against Rockefeller and his company. The Standard Oil Trust effectively eliminated competition. In 1890, John Sherman, a senator from Ohio, proposed an anti-trust act, authorizing the federal government to break up any businesses that prohibited competition. In reality, Rockefeller directed all of these businesses.ĭuring the 1880s and 1890s, Rockefeller came under attack from the federal government for having created a virtual monopoly over the oil industry. In essence, the Standard Oil Company created various companies across the United States that were purportedly their own entities. In 1881, the Standard Oil Company became known as the Standard Oil Trust. By 1878, Standard Oil purportedly controlled ninety percent of the oil refineries in the United States. The company began to purchase or drive out of business oil refiners across the United States. In 1870, Rockefeller united these companies together as the Standard Oil Company.ĭuring the 1870s and 1880s, Rockefeller sought to expand Standard Oil's influence.
In other cases, they bought out the companies or drove them out of business by selling their oil for a much cheaper price than their competitors could. The company organizers convinced numerous other Cleveland firms to join with them. By having a single oil company operating in northeastern Ohio, this company could hopefully fix prices and avoid the tremendous swings as production sometimes increased or dwindled.
They proposed that the three men unite their companies together. Payne, owner of the largest oil refinery in Cleveland. To try and stabilize oil prices Rockefeller and Samuel Andrews, his partner, approached O.H. Prices fluctuated dramatically, as oil production waxed and waned during this period. While Rockefeller reaped extensive wealth in 1865, the oil industry was just beginning to grow. In this year alone, the business earned approximately 200,000 dollars. In 1865, Rockefeller bought out one of the partners' interest in the company, creating Rockefeller & Andrews Oil Company. The men purchased oil wells in Titusville, Pennsylvania, and constructed a well near Cleveland. Rockefeller, a resident of Cleveland Ohio, joined with two partners to establish an oil-refining company.