Productive enclaves in the world oil industry, 1900-1950 by Óscar Moreno Martínez

Óscar Moreno / March 31-2014 / CHoSTM-King’s College London

Productive enclaves in the world oil industry, 1900-1950 During the first half of the 20th century, major multinational oil companies such as AngloPersian, Shell, Gulf, Texaco, and the three largest American Standards (see table 1) expanded rapidly through the settlement of productive enclaves in foreign countries. These enclaves were delimited territories –i.e. towns or camps– within larger surrounding areas –i.e. countries or regions– where the company headquarters or offices operated, usually alongside refineries, oil fields, or ports; where foreign and local staff lived together for producing oil; and where different social matrices clashed. The objective of this essay is to describe the nature of these enclaves through representative cases like: Abadan, Masjed-Soleyman, and Ahvaz in Iran; Dhahran, and Dammam in Saudi Arabia; Ahmadi in Kuwait; Kirkuk in Iraq; Dukhan in Qatar; Pangkalan Brandan, and Balikpapan in Indonesia; Maracaibo, Cabimas, and Ciudad Ojeda in Venezuela; and Poza Rica, and Tampico in Mexico. Urbanization/migration With few exceptions, the productive enclaves tended to be urban centres densely populated with steady migration flows. A significant example was Abadan, a salty and mudflat port town in the southwest of Iran, at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, which grew alongside the world’s largest refinery built by Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) between 1910 and 1912. In few decades Abadan went from a village of Arab fishermen and cultivators to a town of a quarter of a million people, representing the most spectacular urban growth in the Persian Gulf. From 61.000 inhabitants in 1934, Abadan grew to 226.083 in 1956. Likewise, Ahvaz, a river port where APOC established its pipeline headquarters, and the main station for stores, workshops, river and road transport, went from 30.000 inhabitants in 1934 to 120.098 in 1956 (Seccombe and Lawless 1987, 32). Something similar happened with other enclaves. Kirkuk, a town northeastern Iraq close to a giant oil field of the same name, went from 25.000 in 1912 to 120.000 in 1957 (Bet-Shlimon 2012). Dhahran, the major centre of the Saudi oil industry where ARAMCO 1 settled its administrative headquarters, went from a small camp of few hundred workers in the 1930’s to a town of 16.862 in 1950 (Anderson 1981, 117). Tampico, a major oil port in the Huasteca area (Mexico) jumped from 17.569 in 1900 to 94.736 in 1921 (Santiago 2006, 118). And Cabimas, a town in the east shore of Lake Maracaibo alongside Venezuela’s first giant oil field, grew from 1.940 in 1920 to 50.744 in 1950 (González Oquendo 2007). The urbanization, that is to say the process of populating centres with urban features, was closely related to the rise of oil production and the expansion of labour opportunities. In some cases the urbanization depended entirely on oil activities. For example, Pangkalan Brandan was the first enclave in Sumatra (Indonesia) that started being a small camp settled in an inhospitable place and ended up as a small port-town around a refinery. Pangkalan Brandan was built in the 1890’s when the overseas manager of the Royal Dutch Company recruited 400 labourers from Java, Singapore, and Penang “to clear a huge area of virgin jungle and erect the refinery, the brickworks, the sawmill, a water purification system, other workshops, stores, office, and residential accommodation, and then install the equipment” (Jonker and van Zanden 2007, 25). By 1929, the refinery had around 9.000 workers, a hospital and even a prison, and the former poor accommodation had been replaced by proper houses (Lindblad 1989). Likewise, 1

The Arabian American Oil Company (ARAMCO) was a subsidiary of Standard Oil Company of California (SOCAL), and Texaco.

Balikpapan, east Kalimantan (Indonesia), before drilling the first well in 1897 and the erection of a small refinery, was an isolated Bugis fishing village. After the arrival of Shell through the Batavian Oil Company (BOC), part of the Shell group, the village emerged as a true boom town of Indonesian oil industry dominated entirely by BOC (Lindblad 1989). Other good example was Ciudad Ojeda, in the north-eastern shore of Lake Maracaibo. This city was founded in 1937 by the Venezuelan Government mainly for housing the labourers that had been worked in the Lagunillas oil field. Looking for healthier living conditions than the ones at the former enclave, Lagunillas de Aguas, Ciudad Ojeda received a great wave of migrant population especially by the 1950’s due to the increase of oil production (Leal Jerez 2002, 39). Others remarkable examples could be Masjed-Soleyman in Iran, and Dammam in Saudi Arabia, which great urbanization was determinated mainly by the increasing of oil production. In other cases the urbanization was related, but not exclusively, to oil production. For instance, Maracaibo, a port in the western shore of a channel connecting Lake Maracaibo with the Gulf of Venezuela, had been an important urban centre associated with other politic and economic activities long before the Zulia’s oil fields were discovered. Therefore, Maracaibo’s urbanization was linked with different elements and not only with petroleum. However, it can be said that from the 1910’s, when the petroleum activity started in the State of Zulia, Maracaibo became the major commercial town for Venezuelan oil industry, and this explains partly why the city went from 34.740 inhabitants in 1891 to 287.969 in 1950 (González Oquendo 2007). There are few cases in which the urbanization was merely marginal. In the 1920’s, Poza Rica, western Gulf of Mexico, was a scattered rural village of 1.600 peasants. After the Mexican Eagle Petroleum Company (Shell subsidiary) discovered two important wells, a camp was established; however, by the 1930’s, before the nationalization, the camp remained very rustic: with modest accommodation and poor labour conditions. The labourers had capitalist contracts and industrial labour routines, but rural material conditions of living (Olvera 1986). On the other hand, workforce migration represented a key component of the enclaves’ urban growth. There were three mainly basic sources of migration: first, a majoritarian group from the surrounding local zones that was usually unskilled workforce –a percentage of this group would become skilled through company education programmes; second, a medium group from not too distant countries with some industrial experience that represented the semiskilled workforce; and third, a minority group from Europe or North America that was the technical and managerial staff. For example, in Iran by 1928 there were 25.797 APOC employees in total, of which 1.000 were British; 3.050 were Indian, a country that had worked on the textile industry in the 19th century; and around 21.000 from Iranian provinces like Fars or Esfahan, or neighbouring countries like Iraq. Two decades later, there were 77.066 employees in total, of which 2.743 were British; 1.642, Indian; and 72.681, Iranian (Ferrier 1991, 692). In Dukhan the senior staff was British, including few Americans; the clerks and artisans were Indians, Iranians, Pakistanis, Palestinians, and Lebanese; and the unskilled workers were Qatari (Hay 1955). In Indonesia happened something similar: by 1913 the Shell group had 825 European labourers, and 23.167 Asian. The latter were from the surrounding insular areas of Sumatra, Borneo, and Java, and from other parts like Singapore or China (Jonker and van Zanden 2007, 100). Likewise in Venezuela: a group of Americans, British and Dutch lived in the Zulia’s enclaves; others came from Mexico, and Caribbean countries like Trinidad or Curacao; and thousands of workers arrived from the Venezuelan States of Trujillo, Mérida, Táchira, Lara, Falcón, Nueva Esparta and Sucre (Salas 2006). There were cases, for instance Kirkuk, in which the migration caused by oil industry attracted very few new population, but increased the already traditional multicultural composition of Turkish, Kurds and Arabs (Bet-Shlimon 2012).

Modernization/Industrialization In this section I want to argue that together with the settlement of these productive enclaves, there was a ‘modernization kit’ that also settled differentially and fragmentarily in the new territories. This kit was composed by several western modern features: the class-based system headed by a layer of foreign professional elite; the division of social labour, in which some made the manual, others the administrative, and some others the commercial work; the industrial time discipline with the establishment of labour routines; the urban design made over principles of social engineering, including the massive housing programmes based on companies’ requirements, the promotion of the nuclear family model within the household, and the control of public space avoiding collective congregations; the liberal education system through the foundation of primary schools and technical institutes; the importance of healthcare materialized in the construction of hospitals; the management of free time by promoting competition in particular sports or erecting leisure spaces; and even the modern way of punishment by the building of penitentiaries. The Iranian enclaves were one of the best examples. The housing programmes leading by APOC were remarkable: “Between 1936 and 1950 it [APOC] constructed about 21.000 houses (…) The company provided shopping, restaurant and leisure facilities, including nineteen cinemas, twenty swimming pools and various sports grounds” (Bamberg 1994, 367). The rigid architectural design of these residences conditioned the household itself, preventing “the accommodation of large extended families, the basic unit of social life in the region. Nor did it allow the use of the domestic space for economic and productive activities, through the maintenance of livestock and chicken, the production of meat, dairy, and eggs, and vegetable garden plots.” (Ehsani 2003, 387) Likewise, these new houses included modern amenities like electricity, gas, fans, air conditioning, heaters, sewerage, and piped water that introduced new notions of personal hygiene and public health. (Ehsani 2003) The public health was enhanced by the efficient medical care provided by the Company that included “101 doctors of whom 10 were specialists, 7 dentist and 130 nursing staff. There were 4 hospitals with 853 beds and 35 clinics. In 1950 there were 12.162 hospital admissions and 1.530.815 dispensary attendances, 3.111 mayor and 15.080 minor operations performed.” (Bamberg 1994, 375). Furthermore, the enclave’s public space were shaped by urban design, avoiding places for collective congregations. In Masjed-Soleyman, for instance, “official company areas were built separately from one another (…) Neighbourhoods were designed either in a circular pattern, or as parallel streets that are interconnected by perpendicular streets, but with dead ends on both sides, cutting and isolating the neighbourhood from the world beyond, except through the single, easily guarded access road.” (Ehsani 2003, 390) However, this modernization was relative. Even the main Iranian enclave, Abadan, was not entirely modern. By the 1950’s only a third of Abadan population lived in company-controlled areas: 70.000 in the five housing estates for wage-earning employees: Bahmanshir, Jamshid, Farahabad, Bahar and Pirooz; 10.000 in the mixed neighbourhood of Bawarda; and 6.000 in the European area of Braim. The rest two-thirds of Abadan population lived in municipalcontrolled zones: 38.000 in Abadan town, 68.000 in Ahmadabad, 20.000 in the squatter settlement, and 10.000 along the banks of the Bahmishir River. (Seccombe and Lawless 1987, 53). The latter zones represented informality, heterogeneity, dynamism and eclecticism. Therefore, even enclaves like Abadan had actually a contradictory organization with complexes local convergences: on the one hand, the modern industrial areas; and on the other, the chaotic and subversive traditional spaces (Ehsani 2003).

There are thousands of examples about modern initiatives carried out by oil companies. In Balikpapan (Indonesia), “After the arrival of Dutch petroleum companies, the village was transformed by the construction of roads, wharves, warehouses, offices, barracks, and bungalows for export of petroleum and accommodation of Dutch supervisors and Indonesian labourers.” (Wood 1986, 155-156). The Kuwait Oil Company, a joint venture between APOC and Gulf, built in Adhami 1.450 residential housing units, a couple of administrative buildings, a hospital, a fire station, a post office, schools, clubs, shops and gardens (Alissa 2013). Also, during the 1950’s modern education and medical care were introduced: “The schools are provided with dining halls, sports grounds, and swimming pools, and huge kitchens have been built from which the students are to receive free meals. All education in Kuwait, as well as all medical treatment, is free.” (Hay 1955, 367) In Ciudad Ojeda (Venezuela) “The original urban layout of the city has been described by the local press as a ‘European design’ that makes the town ‘modern’, with ‘urban elegance’, or a ‘cosmopolitan corner’ that could be located either in Venezuela or Europe.” (Leal Jerez 2002, 46) Likewise, the sport competences were organized jointly by Caribbean Petroleum Company, Venezuelan Oil Concessions (Shell subsidiaries), and Lago Petroleum (SONJ subsidiary). The aim was to engage the workers to engage healthy activities. “Sport programmes were extensive, and included the formation of leagues between workers of a single field, tournaments against other adjacent fields, and championships or ‘Olympics’ at regional and national level” (Salas 2006, 350) These examples represented the usual view that is common in the literature, but unfortunately not nuanced at all. Tampico was an interesting case. In few decades this Mexican port transformed completely: from a desolate swamp to an urban refinery. McMahon, an American writer, described the change like this: “Before oil, the American, Tampico was a small and poverty stricken city tributary to a few unimproved wooden wharves… a remote, sleepy little port, but within a decade, the city was a metropolis where money flowed like water, the air seemed to quiver with optimism.” (cited by Santiago 2006, 122) Together with oil production, modern features also arrived. Not for nothing foreigners and Mexicans boasted the city was ‘the Queen city of the Mexican Gulf’, ‘the New York of Mexico’, or ‘the Sultana of the South’. However, industrial processes such as the reorganization of land tenure, the transformation of land use, and the emergence of a new working class displaced the former indigenous ecology of the Teenek based on collective land tenure, cornfield agriculture, and respect for nature. These processes far from creating a modern society, provoked disastrous consequences for the environment, and great contradictions between the former order and the new system (Santiago 2006). Another interesting example was Dhahran. From the beginning this Saudi enclave was divided into two parts: the American camp exclusively for Americans, and the Saudi camp only for Saudi workers. Early life in the latter camp was austere and non-modern: informal toilet facilities, poor sleeping conditions, and lack of electricity. Whereas, the American Camp was built from the beginning as a modern suburb with recreation areas, schools, and American-style houses. It was only until the 1950’s and 1960’s that the Saudi Camp and the Eastern Province in general began changing: roads were all paved, thousands of houses were built for Saudi employees, and daily transportation was provided. Nevertheless, no matter how modern was the infrastructure, “people who lived in Saudi Camp were generally poor relative to the rest of the Dhahran community. Mostly uneducated, they tended to lead simple lives (…) Work, prayer, and home life consumed most of their time and energy (…) These were, with exceptions, not modern people; and Saudi Camp did not represent the more modern aspects of the rest of Dhahran.” (Parssinen and Talib 1982, 17)

Segregation/ Distinction The productive enclaves were segregated and hierarchical spaces. In this section I argue that there was an order deliberated imposed by the companies in which certain groups stayed apart and were treated differently from other groups due to three complementary causes: race, industrial or technical knowledge, and class. This argument become clearer with, for instance, the Mexican case. The arrival of oil industry to Huasteca in the 1910’s and the huge task of create an enterprise in the area caused a twofold movement: first, the rapid arrival of immigrant workers provoked the displacement and marginalization of the indigenous population, cutting not only their social participation, but also their chance to obtain rewards from the business; second, new workers entailed new social relations based on rigid class, “the industrialists reserved the executive and managerial levels of labour hierarchy for Europeans and Americans, entrusted supervisor and foremen positions to foreign ‘whites’ workers, and limited the roles of Mexicans to the lowest rungs of the hierarchy” (Santiago 2006, 344) Thus, racist hierarchies not only ushered the oil industry from the beginning, but also shaped new capitalist relationships. In other words, “The convergence of capitalist labour organization and European and American racism meant that the social hierarchies the oilmen built were based on class and race” (Santiago 2006, 6). Tampico, where “Asphalt, potable water, or sewage systems were non-existent in worker’s neighbourhoods” (Santiago 2006, 121) was a good example. Dhahran was another interesting example. Far from being a case of the ‘American exceptionalism’, in which ARAMCO had an enlightening role in Saudi Arabia, the Dhahran enclave shows the segregationist and racist practices, Jim Crow style, deliberately implemented by the company in the Saudi society. “ARAMCO organized life inside the camps on the basis of the then-ruling ideas about the superiority of whites and the inferiority of all others.” (Vitalis 2007, xiv) The hierarchies based on the skin colour or facial features included practices such as separating the camp where American lived from the Saudi camp, forbidding Saudis from living with their families, deporting Americans who pursued contacts with nearby Arab families, and the discrimination within education and public places. These practices were everywhere: in Pangkalan Brandan early labour conditions were severe mainly for local workers, who lived apart from American and European staff. Unlike the latters, local Indonesians had poor accommodation, food shortages, no amenities, hard work (ten-hour a day and seven-day a week), and prohibition from living with their wives (Jonker and van Zanden 2007). In Venezuela, “each oil company has established a well-equipped camp in each field for its white employees, and in addition one or more camps for native labourers.” (Layton 1940, 2) In Ahmadi, the hierarchal system shielded the senior employees from the harsh Arab desert and its people. That is why “The north section [of Ahmadi] was planned to accommodate KOC’s British and American senior staff while the mid-section was designed to house Indian and Pakistani clerical, financial, and technical or junior staff. The Arab Village or south section was planned for KOC’s indigenous workers: Arabs, Kuwaitis, Bedouins, and Iranians (…) this urban hierarchy not only reflected KOC employee grades but also replicated the company’s policy of ethnic segregation,” (Alissa 2013, 45). In Dukhan “Accommodation for the British staff was built first and grouped around the manager’s house. Dormitories for the Qatari workers were constructed some distance to the south.” (Seccombe and Lawless 1987, 46). In Iran, from the beginning APOC’s desire was to isolate its European and also Indian staff from the Persian workforce and the rest of the local population. However, “Gradually, the racial segregation that separated the spaces of routine interaction and daily life between Iranians and 5

the English became less marked, in comparison to the occupational and class distinctions that served as the norms segmenting city spaces.” (Ehsani 2003, 384) Thus, the first racial segregation changed to hierarchic class distinction base on industrial and technical knowledge. In the Iranian enclaves of Abadan, Masjed-Soleyman, and Ahvaz there was an emerging layer of professional and technical elite –in the beginning just from Europe and India, and then from Iran as well– who was in charge, due to their expertise industrial knowledge, of the administrative, commercial, and technical activities. This knowledge distinction occurred everywhere as well. In Venezuela, for instance, a culture of oil based on scientific and technical knowledge brought from North America was established in the oil fields causing local mismatches. The oil techniques imported from the United States represented a powerful colonization instrument, leaving just the social struggle ahead. “Fighting against the hegemony of the culture of oil, which is one aspect of the ‘gringo civilization’, is fight for the freedom of the creole man, conceived this as the consciousness of necessity.” (Quintero 1970, 80) Finally, there were attempts to build mixed spaces as well within these enclaves. Although the implicit apartheid continued and the company’s paternalism remained, the construction of the garden suburb of Bawarda at Abadan in the 1930’s by the architect James M. Wilson’s was a good example. This garden suburb was a kind of “manifesto of racial mixing, an experiment in non-segregation whose very design would ‘afford that link or bridge over the present gulf between these two groups of individuals’.” (Crinson 1997, 351) Bawarda meant the attempt to build an urban model solution that use planning and housing forms with ethnic and social harmony. Although the implicit apartheid continued, and the company´s paternalism remained, “Wilson intended there to be no planned differentiation in terms of sites between European and Iranian residences. He designed three house types to cater for the three classes of employees intended to be housed in Bawarda. ”(Crinson 2003, 356) Thus, European skilled managers, Indian and Caucasian semiskilled staff, and Iranian unskilled workers would not live in separated and dissimilar zones within Abadan, but in the same estate. Resistance/Nationalization The productive enclaves were also resistance spaces. In this last section I argue that the urbanization, modernization, and segregation processes were accompanied by protests and strikes, which accentuated with the national movements. For example, in Venezuela there was a strong syndicalist movement. It is well-known the list of demands of 1936, followed by a crowded unrest, by the oil unions claiming “free traffic on the highways and roads built by the companies, the removal of the fences that isolate the oil fields, more and better housing for workers, and wage increase” (Quintero 1970, 32). Likewise, the first major industrial strike in Iran carried out by an incipient workers’ organization in May, 1929 occurred at Abadan. The workers were against the growing APOC’s authoritarianism, and raise demands for higher wages. These unrests announced “the arrival of a new factor in Iranian politics, an organized working class, and the potency of a new type of protest, the industrial strike.” (Cronin 2010, 699) In turn Saudi Arabia’s first outbreak of labour unrest happened in June, 1945, “when hundreds of workers at the Ras Tanura refinery rioted after delivery of their food rations. The company had promised wheat, rice, and flour, but the men only received the rice (…) the men marched on the terminal, smashing headlights on cars and at some point stoning an American employee who happened upon them” (Vitalis 2007, 93) The national movements stressed the resistance movements and the companies were forced to change their discourse. For instance, with the Pan-Arabism in the 1950’s, the Kuwait Oil 6

Company started appearing as an agent of modernization and Kuwaitization, and Ahmadi’s “architecture and urbanism became the platform upon which the indigenous residents came to experience modernity.” (Alissa 2013, 58) On the other hand, after the Iraqi revolution in the 1950’s, the divisions between local communities (mainly Turkish and Kurds) increased and the former Iraq Petroleum Company’s external patronage turned into tensions and violence (BetShlimon 2012). Bibliography Alissa, Reem. 2013. "The Oil Town of Ahmadi since 1946 From Colonial Town to Nostalgic City." Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East no. 33 (1):41-58. Anderson, Irvine 1981. Aramco, the United States, and Saudi Arabia: A study of the Dynamics of Foreign Oil Policy, 1933-1950. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Bamberg, James. 1994. The History of the British Petroleum Company. The Anglo-Iranian Years, 1928–1954. Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bet-Shlimon, Arbella. 2012. "Group Identities, Oil, and the Local Political Domain in Kirkuk A Historical Perspective." Journal of Urban History no. 38 (5):914-931. Crinson, Mark. 1997. "Abadan: planning and architecture under the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company." Planning Perspectives no. 12 (3):341-359. Crinson, Mark. 2003. Modern architecture and the end of empire. Aldershot: Ashgate. Cronin, Stephanie. 2010. "Popular Politics, the New State and the Birth of the Iranian Working Class: The 1929 Abadan Oil Refinery Strike." Middle Eastern Studies no. 46 (5):699732. Ehsani, Kaveh. 2003. "Social Engineering and the Contradictions of Modernization in Khuzestan's Company Towns: A Look at Abadan and Masjed-Soleyman." International Review of Social History no. 48 (3):361-399. Ferrier, Ronald. 1991. "The Iranian Oil Industry." In The Cambridge History of Iran. From Nadir Shah to the Islamic Republic, edited by P. Avery, G. R. G. Hambly and C. Melville, 639-701. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. González Oquendo, Luis. 2007. Maracaibo: ciudad, petróleo y cambio social. In III Encuentro Nacional de Demógrafos y Estudiosos de Población Cumaná-Venezuela: Universidad de Oriente Hay, Rupert. 1955. "The Impact of the Oil Industry on the Persian Gulf Shaykhdoms." Middle East Journal no. 9 (4):361-372. Jonker, Joost, and Jan L. van Zanden. 2007. From Challenger to Joint Industry Leader, 18901939. A History of Royal Dutch Shell. Vol. 1. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. Layton, Ed. 1940. "Some Venezuelan Experiences." Engineering and Science no. 4 (2):6-21. Leal Jerez, Morelva. 2002. "Imaginarios urbanos e identidades en Ciudad Ojeda." Opción: Revista de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales (37):37-59. Lindblad, J Thomas. 1989. "The petroleum industry in Indonesia before the Second World War." Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies no. 25 (2):53-77. Olvera, Alberto. 1986. "Origen social, condiciones de vida y organización sindical de los trabajadores petroleros de Poza Rica 1932-1935." Parssinen, Jon, and Kaizir Talib. 1982. "A Traditional Community and Modernization: Saudi Camp, Dhahran." Journal of Architectural Education no. 35 (3):14-17. Quintero, Rodolfo. 1970. El petróleo y nuestra sociedad: Universidad Central de Venezuela, ediciones de la Biblioteca.

Salas, Miguel Tinker. 2006. "Cultura, poder y petróleo: Campos petroleros y la construcción de ciudadanía en Venezuela." Espacio Abierto no. 15 (1y2):343-367. Sampson, Anthony. 1991. The seven sisters: the great oil companies and the world they shaped. New York: Bantam Books. Santiago, Myrna I. 2006. The ecology of oil: environment, labor, and the Mexican Revolution, 1900-1938: Cambridge University Press. Seccombe, Ian, and Richard Lawless. 1987. "Work camps and company towns: settlement patterns and the Gulf oil industry." University of Durham, Centre for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies. Vitalis, Robert. 2007. America's kingdom: Mythmaking on the Saudi oil frontier: Stanford University Press. Wood, William B. 1986. "Intermediate cities on a resource frontier." Geographical Review:149-159.

Table 1. The ‘Seven sisters’ and their names 2 1

2 3

Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) 1909-1935 Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) 1935-1954 British Petroleum Company (BP) 1954-1998 BP Amoco plc 1998 -2001 BP plc 2001-currently Royal Dutch Shell Group 1907-2005 Royal Dutch Shell 2005 – currently Standard Oil Company 1870-1911 Standard Oil of New Jersey (SONJ) 1911-1972 Exxon 1972-1999 ExxonMobil 1999-currently Standard Oil Company 1870-1911 Standard Oil Company of New York (Socony) 1911-1931 Socony-Vacuum Oil Company 1931-1955 Socony Mobil Oil Company 1955-1966 Mobil 1966-1999 ExxonMobil 1999-currently Standard Oil Company 1870-1911 Standard Oil Company-California 1911-1926 Standard Oil Company of California-SOCAL 1926-1984 Chevron Corporation 1984- currently Gulf Oil Corporation of Pennsylvania (-1936) Gulf Oil Corporation (1936-1984) Chevron (1984-currently) The Texas Company 1902-1926 Texas Corporation (1926-1941) Texas Company (1941-1959) Texaco (1959-2001) Chevron Texaco (2001-2005) Chevron Corporation (2005-Currently)

‘Seven sisters’ was the sobriquet given to the world’s seven major multinational oil companies that formed the Consortium for Iran in 1954. These seven giant –one British, one Anglo-Dutch, and five American– had dominated the oil business during the first half of the 20th century until the establishment of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in 1961, and the 1973 oil crisis (Sampson 1991).