Standard Vacuum Oil Company
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

The Standard Vacuum Oil Company was an American
joint venture A joint venture (JV) is a business entity created by two or more parties, generally characterized by shared ownership, shared returns and risks, and shared governance. Companies typically pursue joint ventures for one of four reasons: to acce ...
by
Standard Oil of New Jersey Exxon Mobil Corporation ( ) is an American multinational oil and gas corporation headquartered in Spring, Texas, a suburb of Houston. Founded as the largest direct successor of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, the modern company was formed ...
and Socony-Vacuum Oil (aka Mobil) established in 1931 to make and market products in the Far East.Drucker, Peters F. Management, p. 724. Around World War I, the market in the Far East was too large to leave unattended, but still small. Thus these two American oil companies started Standard Vacuum Oil as a joint venture. The two partners would eventually merge into
ExxonMobil Exxon Mobil Corporation ( ) is an American multinational List of oil exploration and production companies, oil and gas corporation headquartered in Spring, Texas, a suburb of Houston. Founded as the Successors of Standard Oil, largest direct s ...
in 1999.


History

Following the break-up of
Standard Oil Standard Oil Company was a Trust (business), 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 of Ohio, Standard Oil Company (Ohio), which had been founde ...
in 1911, the "Standard Oil Company of New York" (also known for its acronym "Socony") was founded, along with 33 other successor companies. In 1920, the company registered the name "Mobiloil" as a
trademark A trademark (also written trade mark or trade-mark) is a form of intellectual property that consists of a word, phrase, symbol, design, or a combination that identifies a Good (economics and accounting), product or Service (economics), service f ...
. Henry Clay Folger was head of the company until 1923, when he was succeeded by Herbert L. Pratt. Beginning February 29, 1928 on
NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. It is one of NBCUniversal's ...
, Socony Oil reached radio listeners with a comedy program, '' Soconyland Sketches'', scripted by William Ford Manley and featuring Arthur Allen and
Parker Fennelly Parker W. Fennelly (October 22, 1891 – January 22, 1988) was an American character actor who appeared in ten films, numerous television episodes and hundreds of radio programs. Early life The son of gardener Nathan Fennelly and Estelle Doll ...
as rural
New England New England is a region consisting of six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York (state), New York to the west and by the ...
ers. Socony continued to sponsor the show when it moved to CBS in 1934. In 1935, it became the ''Socony Sketchbook,'' with Christopher Morley and the
Johnny Green John Waldo Green (October 10, 1908 – May 15, 1989) was an American songwriter, composer, musical arranger, conductor and pianist. He was given the nickname "Beulah" by colleague Conrad Salinger. His most famous song was one of his ear ...
orchestra. In 1931, Socony merged with Vacuum Oil to form Socony-Vacuum. In 1933, Socony-Vacuum and Jersey Standard (which had oil production and refineries in
Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian Ocean, Indian and Pacific Ocean, Pacific oceans. Comprising over List of islands of Indonesia, 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, ...
) merged their interests in the Far East into a 50–50 joint venture. Standard-Vacuum Oil Co., or "Stanvac," operated in 50 countries, including
New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...
,
China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...
, and the region of
East Africa East Africa, also known as Eastern Africa or the East of Africa, is a region at the eastern edge of the Africa, African continent, distinguished by its unique geographical, historical, and cultural landscape. Defined in varying scopes, the regi ...
, before it was dissolved in 1962. In 1937 the Standard Vacuum Oil Company of New York helped establish and fund an exploration team to explore for oil in China. They joined with some wealthy Chinese backers who had an oil concession covering several provinces in north-western China, to make an assessment of recent oil discoveries and to possibly join them in the development of oil resources in the region. This led to the beginning of the petroleum industry in China:
Before 1937, Chinese oil production was measured in quarts and, in its crude condition, was used solely as a lubricant. This first well, developed under the most primitive of conditions and with relatively untrained personnel, began to produce over twenty barrels of oil a day. In time, with equipment brought in from Szechuan and elsewhere and the development of several distillation plants, nine more wells were drilled in the immediate area. A letter from my father to T. E. Mobley of Standard Vacuum in June 1942 . . . reported that the Yu Men wells then had a capacity of about 1,000 barrels of oil and 10,000 gallons of gasoline a day, except in winter when cold weather caused the oil to congeal. This was the first major oil field in China. In 1956 a rail link was built to Lanchow; until then, the oil was transported out by truck. A pipeline was constructed in 1957. The Yu Men refinery was enlarged and modernized, and by the late 1960s it was reported that production from that area was "about two million tons"."Marvin Weller (1984), pp. 393-394.
By the 1950s, things had changed, and the partners were in disagreement, so in 1962 they split Standard Vacuum between them. Within 10 years, the two companies ( Jersey Standard – Southeast Asia, and
Mobil Oil Mobil Oil Corporation, now known as just Mobil, is a petroleum brand owned and operated by American oil and gas corporation ExxonMobil, formerly known as Exxon, which took its current name after it and Mobil merged in 1999. A direct descenda ...
– Southeast Asia) were larger than Standard Vacuum was projected to be.


Bibliography

* Weller, J. Marvin. ''Caravan Across China: An American Geologist Explores the Northwest 1937-1938''. (1984). March Hare Publishing, San Francisco. .


References

{{ExxonMobil Former ExxonMobil subsidiaries Defunct oil companies of the United States American companies established in 1911 Energy companies established in 1911