Chevron

History

The following section is an excerpt from Wikipedia's Chevron Corporation page on 26 May 2017, text available via the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Chevron Corporation (NYSE: CVX) is an American multinational energy corporation. One of the successor companies of Standard Oil, it is headquartered in San Ramon, California, and active in more than 180 countries. Chevron is engaged in every aspect of the oil, natural gas, and geothermal energy industries, including hydrocarbon exploration and production; refining, marketing and transport; chemicals manufacturing and sales; and power generation. Chevron is one of the world's largest oil companies; as of 2014, it ranked third in the Fortune 500 list of the top US closely held and public corporations and sixteenth on the Fortune Global 500 list of the top 500 corporations worldwide. It was also one of the Seven Sisters that dominated the global petroleum industry from the mid-1940s to the 1970s.

Chevron's downstream operations manufacture and sell products such as fuels, lubricants, additives and petrochemicals. The company's most significant areas of operations are the west coast of North America, the U.S. Gulf Coast, Southeast Asia, South Korea, Australia and South Africa. In 2010, Chevron sold an average 3.1 million barrels per day (490×103 m3/d) of refined products like gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.

Chevron's alternative energy operations include geothermal, solar, wind power, biofuel, fuel cells, and hydrogen. In 2011–2013, the company planned to spend at least $2 billion on research and acquisition of renewable power ventures. Chevron has claimed to be the world's largest producer of geothermal energy. In October 2011, Chevron launched a 29-MW thermal solar-to-steam facility in the Coalinga Field to produce the steam for enhanced oil recovery. The project is the largest of its kind in the world.

Chevron is also one of the first two fuel brands to be Top Tier certified. The other is Tulsa, Oklahoma based QuikTrip.

In 1911, the federal government broke Standard Oil into several pieces under the Sherman Antitrust Act. One of those pieces, Standard Oil Co. (California), went on to become Chevron. It became part of the "Seven Sisters", which dominated the world oil industry in the early 20th century. In 1926, the company changed its name to Standard Oil Co. of California (SOCAL). By the terms of the breakup of Standard Oil, at first Standard of California could use the Standard name only within its original geographic area of the Pacific coast states, plus Nevada and Arizona; outside that area, it had to use another name. Today Chevron is the owner of the Standard Oil trademark in 16 states in the western and southeastern U.S. To maintain ownership of the mark, the company owns and operates one Standard-branded Chevron station in each state of the area. Although its status in Kentucky is up in the air after Chevron withdrew retail sales from Kentucky in July 2010.

The Chevron name came into use for some of its retail products in the 1930s. The name Calso was also used from 1946 to 1955 in states outside its native West Coast territory.

Standard Oil Company of California ranked 75th among United States corporations in the value of World War II military production contracts.

In 1933, Saudi Arabia granted California Standard a concession to find oil, which led to the discovery of oil in 1938. In 1948, California Standard discovered the world's largest oil field in Saudi Arabia, Ghawar Field. California Standard's subsidiary, California-Arabian Standard Oil Company, grew over the years and became the Arabian American Oil Company (ARAMCO) in 1944. In 1973, the Saudi government began buying into ARAMCO. By 1980, the company was entirely owned by the Saudis, and in 1988, its name was changed to Saudi Arabian Oil Company—Saudi Aramco.

Standard Oil of California and Gulf Oil merged in 1984, which was the largest merger in history at that time. To comply with U.S. antitrust law,California Standard divested many of Gulf's operating subsidiaries, and sold some Gulf stations and a refinery in the eastern United States. (The refinery is currently owned by Sunoco.) Among the assets sold off were Gulf's retail outlets in Gulf's home market of Pittsburgh, where Chevron lacks a retail presence but does retain a regional headquarters there as of 2013, partially for Marcellus Shale-related drilling. The same year, Standard Oil of California also took the opportunity to change its legal name to Chevron Corporation, since it had already been using the well-known "Chevron" retail brand name for decades. Chevron would sell the Gulf Oil trademarks for the entire U.S. to Cumberland Farms, the parent company of Gulf Oil LP, in 2010 after Cumberland Farms had a license to the Gulf trademark in the Northeastern United States since 1986.

In 1996 Chevron transferred its natural gas gathering, operating and marketing operation to NGC Corporation (later Dynegy) in exchange for a roughly 25% equity stake in NGC. In a merger completed February 1, 2000, Illinova Corp. became a wholly owned subsidiary of Dynegy Inc. and Chevron's stake increased up to 28%. However, in May 2007 Chevron sold its stake in the company for approximately $985 million, resulting in a gain of $680 million.

On October 15, 2000, Chevron announced acquisition of Texaco in a deal valued at $45 billion, creating the second-largest oil company in the United States and the world's fourth-largest publicly traded oil company with a combined market value of approximately $95 billion. The merged company was named ChevronTexaco. On May 9, 2005, ChevronTexaco announced it would drop the Texaco moniker and return to the Chevron name. Texaco remained as a brand under the Chevron Corporation.

On October 10, 2001, Texaco purchased General Motors' share in GM Ovonics, which in 2003, was restructured into Cobasys, a 50/50 joint venture between Chevron and Energy Conversion Devices Ovonics. In 2009, both Chevron and Energy Conservation Devices sold their stakes in Cobasys to SB LiMotive Co.

In 2005, Chevron purchased Unocal Corporation for $18.4 billion, increasing the company's petroleum and natural gas reserves by about 15%. Because of Unocal's large South East Asian geothermal operations, Chevron became a large producer of geothermal energy.

Chevron and the Los Alamos National Laboratory started a cooperation in 2006 to improve the recovery of hydrocarbons from oil shale by developing a shale oil extraction process named Chevron CRUSH. In 2006, the United States Department of the Interior issued a research, development and demonstration lease for Chevron's demonstration oil shale project on public lands in Colorado's Piceance Basin. In February 2012, Chevron notified the Bureau of Land Management and the Department of Reclamation, Mining and Safety that it intends to divest this lease.

In July 2010, Chevron ended retail operations in the Mid-Atlantic United States, removing the Chevron and Texaco names from 1,100 stations. In 2011, Chevron acquired Pennsylvania based Atlas Energy Inc. for $3.2 billion in cash and an additional $1.1 billion in existing debt owed by Atlas. Three months later, Chevron acquired drilling and development rights for another 228,000 acres in the Marcellus Shale from Chief Oil & Gas LLC and Tug Hill, Inc.

In September 2013, Total S.A and its joint venture partner agreed to buy Chevron’s retail distribution business in Pakistan for an undisclosed amount. In October 2014, Chevron announced that it would sell a 30 percent holding in its Canadian oil shale holdings to Kuwait’s state-owned oil company Kuwait Oil Company for a fee of $1.5 billion.

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