History

The company is in its 125th anniversary in 2004, tracing its roots to an oil discovery in Pico Canyon (now the Pico Canyon Oilfield) north of Los Angeles. This find led to the formation, in 1879, of the Pacific Coast Oil Company, the oldest predecessor of Chevron Corporation. Another side of the genealogical chart points to the 1901 founding of The Texas Fuel Company, a modest enterprise that started out in three rooms of a corrugated iron building in Beaumont, Texas. This company would later become known as Texaco. Chevron Corporation was originally known as Standard Oil of California, or SoCal, and was formed amid the antitrust breakup of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil company in 1911. It was one of the "Seven Sisters" that dominated the world oil industry during the early 20th century. In 1933, Saudi Arabia granted SoCal a concession to find oil, which occurred in 1938. In the early 1950s, SoCal discovered the world's largest oil field (Gnawer) in Saudi Arabia. SoCal's subsidiary, California-Arabian Standard Oil Company, evolved over the years, becoming 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, the name was changed to Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Saudi Aramco). In 1984, the merger between Standard Oil of California and Gulf Oil was the largest merger in history at that time. Because of its size, SoCal divested many of Gulf's operating subsidiaries and sold some Gulf stations and a refinery in the eastern United States to satisfy U.S. antitrust requirements. As part of the merger, SoCal changed its name to Chevron Corporation. In June 1998 Dynegy, Inc. (NYSE: DYN) was created from the merger of Chevron's former natural gas and natural gas liquids businesses with Dynegy's predecessor, NGC Corp. (formerly NYSE: NGL). NGC had been an integrated natural gas services company around since 1994. In a merger completed February 1, 2000, Illinova Corp. (formerly NYSE: ILN) became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dynegy Inc., in which Chevron also took a 28% stake. In 2001, Chevron Corporation acquired Texaco to form ChevronTexaco.On May 9, 2005, ChevronTexaco announced it would drop the Texaco moniker and return to the Chevron name. Texaco remains as a brand name under the Chevron Corporation. On August 19, 2005, Chevron acquired the Unocal Corporation. Because of Unocal's large South East Asian geothermal operations, this made Chevron the world's largest producer of geothermal energy.