Chevron uo
Play embedded story automatically:
You can add the timeline and map to another page, just copy and paste the story embed code above.
Customize dimensionsHere you can specify desired dimensions for embedded story to make it fit in your blog etc.
Custom Width & Height
x px14 events | No comments | 1. September 1876 - 1. April 1961
Spurred by memories of the gold rush, hordes of prospectors descended on California in the 1860s, seeking another kind of bounty - black gold, or oil. Their early efforts were fruitless. Undeterred, petroleum pioneers Demetrius Scofield and Frederick...
1. September 1876
In 1878, Standard Oil Co. opened a three-person, second-story office in San Francisco. Despite its modest trappings, Standard possessed marketing acumen, outstanding products, an aggressive advertising philosophy and financial backing from its New...
1. January 1878
After buying 500 acres of rolling lands on the northeast shore of San Francisco Bay in 1901, Standard completed the Richmond Refinery a year later. To feed this new colossus of West Coast refineries, Standard laid a pipeline from Richmond to the...
1. January 1901
As the company grew, it changed structurally. In 1906, a consolidation between Pacific Coast Oil and Iowa Standard created a new entity, Standard Oil Co. (California), finalizing an integration that had existed for six years...
1. January 1906
Until now, Standard had left the hunt for oil to others. In 1909, the company decided to gamble on its ability to find its own oil. After several initial failures, the drilling team had its first success on Jan...
22. January 1910
The company's expertise in searching for oil became increasingly important as a May 1911 Supreme Court decision separated Standard Oil Co. (California) from its parent, a giant New York-based corporation...
1. May 1911
After moving into the Los Angeles basin, Fred Hillman led his exploration team in delivering five gushers at the Emery Field in the West Coyote Hills between December 1912 and October 1913. Standard Oil Co...
1. December 1912
Standard Oil Co. (California) also steadily expanded its service station network. It became the Western leader by the end of 1919 with a total of 218 stations, more than the next three rivals combined...
1. January 1919
25-person exploratory team sailed from San Francisco to Bondoc Peninsula in the Philippines, followed by a freighter carrying 1,000 tons of equipment. Meanwhile, other Socal crews were deployed as far afield as Alaska and Colombia in the quest for oil.
1. December 1920
As Standard Oil Co. (California) entered the 1920s, the market's insatiable need for petroleum products continued. In 1925 alone, the company's three refineries at Richmond, El Segundo and Bakersfield produced more than 56 million barrels of...
1. January 1926
"Though only modest in production, the Bahrain discovery was a momentous event, with far wider implications," wrote historian Daniel Yergin of the 1932 strike by Socal. "After all, the tiny island of Bahrain was only 20 miles away from the mainland of...
1. June 1932
Socal had already found a potential market for its Middle Eastern oil by creating a historic partnership with Texaco in 1936. The joint venture, which became known as the California Texas Oil Company, or Caltex, melded the company's Middle Eastern...
1. January 1936
Socal engineers achieved a major feat in building a pipeline over the highest pass any line had ever crossed. The pipeline brought oil from the Rangely Field to a newly constructed refinery in Salt Lake City...
1. September 1950
U.S. expansion continued in 1961 when the company merged with Standard Oil Co. (Kentucky), the market leader in petroleum products in five Southeastern states. To serve this market with crude oil from fields in the Gulf of Mexico, the company...
1. April 1961
