Chevron Corporation

Based on Wikipedia: Chevron Corporation

The Oil Giant That Ate Its Siblings

In 1911, the United States government took a sledgehammer to the most powerful corporation the world had ever seen. Standard Oil, John D. Rockefeller's petroleum empire, was broken into dozens of pieces under the Sherman Antitrust Act. The idea was simple: competition would flourish, prices would fall, and no single company would ever again wield such terrifying economic power.

It didn't quite work out that way.

One of those fragments, Standard Oil Company of California, spent the next century methodically devouring its siblings and rivals. Today we call it Chevron, and it stands as the second-largest oil company in the United States—trailing only ExxonMobil, another Standard Oil descendant. The family reunion, it seems, never really ended.

Before There Was Standard

The story begins not with Rockefeller but with a modest discovery in the Santa Susana Mountains north of Los Angeles. In 1876, a small outfit called Star Oil struck crude at the Pico Canyon Oilfield. The well produced just twenty-five barrels per day—a trickle by modern standards—but geophysicists consider it the birth of California's modern petroleum industry.

Three years later, a group of investors including Charles Felton and Lloyd Tevis pooled one million dollars to create the Pacific Coast Oil Company, which promptly absorbed Star Oil. Pacific Coast grew to dominate California's oil market, which made it an irresistible target.

In 1900, Rockefeller's Standard Oil came calling with $761,000 in hand. Pacific Coast Oil became Standard Oil of California, joining the vast network of companies that controlled nearly every aspect of American petroleum—from the wellhead to the gas pump.

The Terrible Twins

Standard Oil of California wasn't the only aggressive player emerging from the early oil boom. Down in Beaumont, Texas, a man known as "Buckskin Joe"—a nickname he earned through harsh and aggressive business tactics—founded the Texas Fuel Company. This outfit would eventually become Texaco.

For a century, these two companies operated in close partnership. Energy analysts often called them the "terrible twins" for their cutthroat business practices. In 1936, they formalized their relationship by creating Caltex, a joint venture to drill and produce oil in Saudi Arabia.

That Saudi connection would prove extraordinarily lucrative.

The Desert Jackpot

In 1933, Saudi Arabia granted California Standard a concession to explore for oil in its territory. Five years of drilling through desert sand paid off in 1938 when the company struck crude. But the real prize came a decade later.

In 1948, California Standard's subsidiary—by then called the Arabian American Oil Company, or ARAMCO—discovered the Ghawar Field. It remains the largest conventional oil field ever found on Earth. At its peak, Ghawar alone produced more than five million barrels per day, roughly five percent of global consumption.

The Saudi government began buying into ARAMCO in 1973 and completed the nationalization by 1980. Today we know the company as Saudi Aramco, the most valuable corporation on the planet by some measures. But for decades, American oil companies reaped the profits from this desert bonanza.

The Seven Sisters

By the mid-twentieth century, the global petroleum industry was dominated by seven massive corporations that journalists dubbed the "Seven Sisters." Standard Oil of California was among them, alongside its former Standard Oil siblings and a few other giants like British Petroleum and Royal Dutch Shell.

These companies controlled everything. They determined how much oil got pumped, where it flowed, and what consumers paid for it. When Middle Eastern nations began demanding better terms in the 1970s, the Sisters' grip finally started to slip.

But they adapted. They merged. They acquired. And by the twenty-first century, the Seven Sisters had consolidated into four "supermajors"—with Chevron standing among them.

Eating Gulf Whole

The biggest meal in Chevron's corporate diet came in 1984. Standard Oil of California merged with Gulf Oil, a Pittsburgh-based giant, in what was then the largest merger in history.

To satisfy antitrust regulators, the combined company had to sell off significant pieces—Gulf's retail stations in the eastern United States, a Philadelphia refinery, and ironically, Gulf's home market outlets in Pittsburgh itself. Chevron still maintains regional headquarters in Pittsburgh today, partly to manage drilling operations in the Marcellus Shale natural gas formation.

The company took the opportunity to formally rename itself Chevron Corporation. The "Chevron" brand had been used at gas stations since the 1930s, named for the distinctive V-shaped stripes on its logo. Now the brand became the company.

The Texaco Reunion

In October 2000, Chevron announced it would acquire its longtime partner Texaco for forty-five billion dollars. The deal closed the following year, briefly creating a company called ChevronTexaco before reverting to simply Chevron in 2005.

The merger created the second-largest oil company in the United States and the fourth-largest publicly traded oil company in the world, with a combined market value of ninety-five billion dollars. The terrible twins had finally become one.

Texaco lives on as a brand. You can still fill your tank at Texaco stations. But the company that Buckskin Joe founded in the Texas oil boom is now just a marketing label owned by Chevron.

What Does Chevron Actually Do?

Chevron is what the industry calls "vertically integrated." This means the company participates in every stage of getting petroleum products from underground reservoirs to your gas tank.

At the upstream end, Chevron explores for oil and natural gas deposits, drills wells, and pumps hydrocarbons out of the ground. In 2018, its American operations alone produced an average of 791,000 barrels of oil-equivalent per day.

In the midstream phase, the company operates pipelines and transportation networks to move crude oil and natural gas from production sites to processing facilities.

Downstream, Chevron runs refineries that transform crude oil into gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and thousands of other petroleum products. It operates chemical plants that produce plastics, synthetic materials, and industrial compounds. And it manages the retail and marketing operations that put Chevron and Texaco branded fuel into vehicles across the Americas, Southeast Asia, South Korea, and Australia.

The company also generates electricity, often using natural gas as fuel. More recently, it has invested in geothermal energy—heat drawn from the Earth's interior—through assets acquired when it purchased Unocal Corporation in 2005.

The Trademark Game

American trademark law operates on a "use it or lose it" principle. If you don't actively use a brand name, you lose the legal right to it. This creates a peculiar situation for Chevron.

Through its acquisition history, Chevron owns the "Standard Oil" trademark in sixteen states across the western and southeastern United States. To maintain these rights, the company operates at least one Standard-branded gas station in each state where it holds the trademark—even though the Standard Oil monopoly was broken up more than a century ago.

So somewhere in each of these states, there's a lonely Chevron station flying the Standard banner, serving as a legal placeholder for a name that once represented the most powerful trust in American history.

The Pandemic Merger That Wasn't

When COVID-19 crashed oil demand in early 2020, Chevron and ExxonMobil discussed merging. Had it happened, "Chexxon" would have reunited two of the largest fragments of the original Standard Oil monopoly, creating the second-largest oil company on Earth after Saudi Aramco.

The deal fell apart, but the fact that it was seriously considered shows how much the industry has consolidated since that 1911 breakup. Two companies that were forcibly separated by antitrust action came within negotiating distance of recombining into something approaching Rockefeller's original vision.

Venezuela: The Complicated Return

For years, United States sanctions prevented American oil companies from operating freely in Venezuela, imposed over corruption and human rights violations by President Nicolás Maduro's government. In late 2022, the Biden administration relaxed these restrictions for Chevron specifically.

The company operates two major joint ventures in Venezuela: Petroboscán in the west and Petropiar in the eastern Orinoco Belt. Together, these projects have capacity for about 180,000 barrels per day, though actual production has been far lower.

The relaxed sanctions came with strings attached. Chevron cannot sell Venezuelan oil to Russian or Iranian-affiliated buyers. No profits can flow directly to Venezuela's state oil company. The arrangement represents a delicate balancing act—allowing some oil to flow while maintaining pressure on the Maduro government.

Shortly after meeting with Chevron's president, Venezuelan Petroleum Minister Tareck El Aissami resigned amid corruption allegations. He reportedly has a ten-million-dollar United States government bounty on his head for allegedly facilitating drug trafficking. The Venezuelan oil business, it seems, remains as complicated as ever.

Walking Away from Myanmar

Not all of Chevron's international moves involve expansion. In January 2022, the company announced it would exit Myanmar entirely, citing "deteriorating rule of law" and "rampant human rights abuses" following the 2021 military coup.

The statement was unusually blunt for a major corporation. Chevron said it remained "firmly opposed to the human rights violations committed by the current military rule" while committing to an orderly withdrawal that would continue providing energy to Southeast Asia during the transition.

This wasn't purely altruistic. Operating in a country under military dictatorship creates legal, reputational, and practical risks. But the explicit human rights language marked a notable departure from the typical corporate focus on shareholder value.

The Climate Calculation

Like all major oil companies, Chevron faces mounting pressure over climate change. The company has responded with investments in lower-carbon technologies, though critics argue these efforts are modest compared to its core fossil fuel business.

In 2020, Chevron invested in Carbon Clean Solutions, which develops portable carbon capture equipment—technology that removes carbon dioxide from industrial emissions before they reach the atmosphere. In 2022, it acquired Renewable Energy Group, a biodiesel producer based in Iowa.

The company also purchased Beyond6, a network of fifty-five compressed natural gas fueling stations across the United States. Natural gas produces less carbon dioxide than coal or oil when burned, though methane leaks during extraction and transport can offset these benefits.

Whether these moves represent a genuine energy transition or strategic positioning for regulatory changes remains debated. Chevron continues to explore for new oil and gas reserves while investing relatively small sums in alternatives.

Moving to Texas

For most of its history, Chevron called California home. The company originated in southern California oil fields, headquartered for decades in San Francisco, and moved to San Ramon in the Bay Area's East Bay in 2001.

In August 2024, Chevron announced it would relocate its corporate headquarters to Houston, Texas. The move completes a long migration of oil industry power from California to the Gulf Coast, where many of Chevron's operations are concentrated and where the regulatory and political climate has traditionally been friendlier to fossil fuel companies.

Houston is already home to ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, and dozens of other energy companies. Chevron's arrival consolidates the city's position as the capital of the American oil industry.

The Last Sister Standing

When ExxonMobil was removed from the Dow Jones Industrial Average in 2020, Chevron became the sole remaining oil and gas company in that venerable stock index. The Dow, which tracks thirty major American corporations, once included multiple petroleum giants. Now Chevron stands alone as the sector's representative.

The company ranked tenth on the Fortune 500 in 2023, placing it among the largest corporations in America by revenue. Only its sibling ExxonMobil generates more revenue among United States-based oil companies.

From a twenty-five-barrel-per-day well in the Santa Susana Mountains, through the breakup of Standard Oil, across a century of mergers and acquisitions, Chevron has grown into a corporation active in more than 180 countries. It explores for oil in Kazakhstan, refines crude in South Korea, sells gasoline in Australia, and pumps hydrocarbons from the Gulf of Mexico.

The trustbusters of 1911 would probably be dismayed. But they might also recognize something familiar in Chevron's relentless consolidation—echoes of the original Standard Oil, still pursuing Rockefeller's vision of controlling every barrel from wellhead to gas pump.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.