Chevron
Type: Public (NYSE: CVX)Founded: 1879 (Pico Canyon, California)
Headquarters: San Ramon, California, USA
Key people: David J. O'Reilly, CEO & Chairman Steve Crowe, CFO
Industry: Oil and Gasoline
Products: Petrochemical
Website: www.chevron.com
General Information
Chevron Corporation (NYSE: CVX) is one of the world's largest global energy companies. Headquartered in San Ramon, California, USA and active in more than 180 countries, it is engaged in every aspect of the oil and gas industry, including exploration and production; refining, marketing and transport; chemicals manufacturing and sales; and power generation. Chevron is one of the world's six supermajor oil companies.History
Chevron was originally known as Standard Oil of California, or Socal, and was formed amid the antitrust breakup of Standard Oil 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 finally occurred in 1938 when the largest oil field on earth was discovered. 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 Chevron and Gulf Oil became the largest merger in world history at the time. Because of its size, Gulf divested many of its worldwide operating subsidiaries and sold some Gulf stations and a refinery in the eastern United States to satisfy US antitrust requirements.
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, the former Chevron corporation merged with Texaco to form ChevronTexaco. On May 9, 2005, ChevronTexaco announced it would drop the Texaco moniker and return to the Chevron name. Texaco will remain as a brand under the Chevron Corporation. On August 19, 2005, Chevron merged with the Unocal Corporation, a move which, because of Unocal's large South East Asian geothermal operations, made Chevron the largest producer of geothermal energy in the world.