From a London seashell trade to Persian oil and Standard Oil's breakup: where four major forecourt names came from and which pump brands belong to whom.
Shell, BP, ExxonMobil and Chevron supply fuel through brands including Shell, BP, Amoco, Aral, Exxon, Mobil, Esso, Chevron and Texaco. Shell has around 44,000 service stations and BP around 21,200. ExxonMobil and Chevron both descend from the Standard Oil breakup of 1911.
One of the world's biggest fuel brands is named after seashells. Shell's founders came from a London family business that moved into importing and selling them in 1833, and the oil company that grew out of it now has around 44,000 service stations. Shell, BP, ExxonMobil and Chevron are four of the major names on the world's forecourts, and each reached the pump by a very different road.
Shell petrol stations: from seashells to 44,000 forecourts
Shell dates from April 1907, when two rivals joined forces: the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company from the Netherlands and the "Shell" Transport and Trading Company from Britain. Royal Dutch received 60 percent of the shares and Shell 40 percent. The deal was arranged by Calouste Gulbenkian, and the spur was the need to take on America's Standard Oil.
The partners had little in common. Royal Dutch began in 1890 to exploit an oilfield at Pangkalan Brandan, on Sumatra. Shell Transport was set up in 1897 by Marcus Samuel and his brother Samuel Samuel, whose family antiques firm in Houndsditch, London, had moved into importing and selling seashells in 1833. National pride ruled out an outright takeover, so both kept their legal identity and operated as one business. That arrangement lasted until 20 July 2005, when a single parent, Royal Dutch Shell plc, took over.
Growth was rapid. By 1920 Shell led the world in oil production, and by the end of the decade it supplied 11 percent of global crude and owned 10 percent of tanker tonnage. In the First World War it fuelled the British Expeditionary Force, was the only provider of aviation fuel and made 80 percent of the army's TNT. It later counted among the Seven Sisters, the majors that ruled petroleum between the mid-1940s and mid-1970s. In 1932 its British sales arm joined with BP's as Shell-Mex & BP, and the two brands parted in the mid-1970s.
Shell now works in over 99 countries and produces roughly 3.7 million barrels of oil equivalent daily. It ranks third among the world's oil companies, behind ExxonMobil and Chevron, and is the biggest investor-owned one in Europe. Its portfolio takes in more than fuel. It owns Jiffy Lube, Pennzoil and Quaker State, the last two coming with a 2002 purchase of Pennzoil-Quaker State that cost about US$1.8 billion and also delivered Rain-X and Fix-a-Flat. In 2016 it added BG Group.
There have been stumbles. Shell overstated its reserves in 2004, which brought a GBP 17 million fine from Britain's Financial Services Authority, the exit of chairman Philip Watts and, in 2007, $450 million paid to shareholders outside America. In the 1990s protesters objected to plans to dispose of the Brent Spar platform at sea. Shell backed down but argued that sinking it would have been better for the environment.
Shell took its name from a London family's seashell trade.
BP petrol stations: from Persian oil to Amoco and Aral
BP started out in 1909 as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, a Burmah Oil subsidiary formed to exploit the oil British geologists had struck at Masjed Soleyman in Persia in May 1908. It was the Middle East's first commercially significant oil discovery, and William Knox D'Arcy held the right to search for it.
A big customer soon appeared: the state. Abadan Island's refinery opened in 1912. In 1914 the British government bought a controlling 50.0025 percent holding, pushed by Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, and the Royal Navy rapidly moved most of its warships from coal to oil. Two years later the company acquired the British Petroleum Company, which had been the British marketing arm of a German firm. After the First World War it began selling across continental Europe and put up refineries at Llandarcy in Wales, the UK's first, and at Grangemouth. Together with the Australian government it set up Commonwealth Oil Refineries, whose plant at Laverton, Victoria, was Australia's first.
The company's name followed politics. It became Anglo-Iranian in 1935, after Reza Shah asked the world to say Iran rather than Persia, and British Petroleum in 1954. Iran nationalised its oil industry in April 1951 and the firm pulled out its management, returning after the 1953 coup. When the revolution came in 1979, Iran took the remaining assets with no compensation, and BP lost 40 percent of its worldwide crude supply.
That pushed it to search further afield. BP was the first to find oil in the North Sea, in 1965, and in 1969 it found oil at Prudhoe Bay in Alaska, the same year it reached the United States by buying Sinclair's East Coast refining and marketing business. It gained control of Standard Oil of Ohio in 1978. Between 1979 and 1987 the British government sold its shares in stages. A 1998 merger with Amoco made BP Amoco, followed by purchases of ARCO, Burmah Castrol and Aral AG, and since 2001 the name has been plain BP p.l.c.
As of 2024 BP was active in 61 countries and pumping around 2.4 million barrels of oil equivalent a day. Its roughly 21,200 service stations carry the BP name across the world, Amoco in America and Aral in Germany. BP America is its biggest division.
Disasters have marked its history. A 2005 explosion at its Texas City refinery killed 15 workers. In 1967 the tanker Torrey Canyon, chartered by BP, was wrecked in Britain's worst oil spill. The 2010 Deepwater Horizon blowout released about 4.9 million barrels, the biggest accidental discharge into marine waters ever recorded, and the total bill passed $65 billion.
ExxonMobil: Exxon, Mobil and Esso stations
ExxonMobil came into being in 1999 when Exxon and Mobil merged. Based in Spring, Texas, it is John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil's biggest direct successor and the world's largest investor-owned oil company, accounting for about 3 percent of global oil output.
Two family trees met in the merger. Vacuum Oil was founded in 1866, bought by Standard in 1879 and spun out again in the 1911 breakup, and after joining Standard Oil of New York in 1931 it became Mobil. The other branch, Standard Oil of New Jersey, kept the Standard name in much of the eastern United States and grew into the leading oil firm worldwide, aided by taking over Humble Oil in the 1930s. Owning the Standard name only in part of the country was a nuisance, so in 1972 it replaced Esso, Enco and Humble Oil with a single new name, Exxon. The two groups agreed terms in 1998 and finished the deal on 30 November 1999. Exxon survived as the legal entity, and its ticker changed from XON to XOM.
The pump brands remain a patchwork. Mobil leads in California, Florida, New York, New England, the Great Lakes region and the Midwest. Exxon covers everywhere else in America, with the greatest numbers in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Texas and the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast. Only Shell USA has more American stations than ExxonMobil, which is present in 46 states and sits ahead of Phillips 66. Abroad, Esso trades in 14 countries and Mobil in 29 countries and regions, and Esso is the one name rarely seen on American forecourts.
Drivers also meet the group through Mobil 1, a synthetic oil that has carried the official NASCAR badge since 2003. ExxonMobil is a partner of Oracle Red Bull Racing in Formula One and of Kalitta Motorsports, and in 2018 it launched ExxonMobil Rewards+, a points scheme at its American stations that later reached the United Kingdom. Behind the pumps are 21 refineries. The Exxon Valdez disaster of 1989 in Alaska is regarded as one of the worst oil spills for environmental damage.
Chevron fuel brand: Standard Oil of California and its inheritance
Chevron is Standard Oil's other great descendant. It started as the Standard Oil Company of California, called Socal, works in more than 180 countries and ranks second to ExxonMobil among American oil companies by revenue.
Its beginnings predate Rockefeller. A company called Star Oil struck oil at Pico Canyon, north of Los Angeles, in 1876, with a well that gave 25 barrels a day. In 1879 the Pacific Coast Oil Company absorbed its assets, and in 1900 Standard Oil paid $761,000 for Pacific Coast. By 1906 the business had been renamed Standard Oil Company (California). The 1911 court-ordered breakup of Standard Oil, under the Sherman Antitrust Act, released it as a separate firm, though initially it could use the Standard name only in the Pacific coast states along with Nevada and Arizona.
The legacy lives on at the roadside. American trademark law says you must use a mark or lose it, so Chevron, which holds the Standard Oil trademark in 16 states of the west and southeast, runs one Standard-branded Chevron station in each of them. The Chevron name began on some retail products during the 1930s, and Calso was the name used in 1946 to 1955 outside the West Coast.
The firm also helped open Saudi Arabia. A concession came in 1933, oil flowed in 1938, and in 1948 California Standard located Ghawar, the largest oil field known. The venture became Aramco, fully Saudi-owned by 1980 and renamed Saudi Aramco in 1988.
Mergers brought the other brands. In 1984 the company joined Gulf Oil in what was then the biggest merger ever, selling off many Gulf subsidiaries and a number of eastern stations to meet antitrust law. It used the moment to make Chevron Corporation its legal name. It sold the Gulf trademarks for the whole United States to Cumberland Farms in 2010. Texaco came in a $45 billion deal announced on 15 October 2000 and completed on 9 October 2001; after four years as ChevronTexaco, the group reverted to Chevron and kept Texaco as a brand on some stations. When it bought Unocal in 2005 for $18.4 billion, the Union 76 retail business was not included, having been sold in 1997, and the 76 brand today belongs to Phillips 66, which has no tie to Chevron.
Retail has been trimmed since. In July 2010 Chevron left retailing in the Mid-Atlantic United States, taking the Chevron and Texaco names off 1,100 stations. It is now the only oil and gas company left in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, ExxonMobil having dropped out in 2020.
| Company | Roots | Pump brands named | Scale quoted |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shell | Merger of Royal Dutch and Shell Transport, 1907 | Shell | Around 44,000 service stations; over 99 countries |
| BP | Anglo-Persian Oil Company, 1909 | BP, Amoco, Aral | Around 21,200 service stations; 61 countries |
| ExxonMobil | Standard Oil successors Exxon and Mobil, merged 1999 | Exxon, Mobil, Esso | Stations in 46 US states; Esso in 14 countries, Mobil in 29 |
| Chevron | Standard Oil Company of California, 1906 | Chevron, Texaco | Active in more than 180 countries |
What these brands mean at the pump
A few translations help when choosing where to fill up. Amoco and Aral are BP brands. Mobil and Esso belong to ExxonMobil. Texaco is a Chevron brand on some stations, whereas Union 76 is not Chevron's at all, and neither are the Gulf signs in America, since Chevron sold that trademark. Jiffy Lube, Pennzoil and Quaker State sit with Shell.
Loyalty schemes are brand-specific as well. ExxonMobil Rewards+ gives points on fill-ups at its stations in the United States and the United Kingdom, and Mobil 1 is the oil behind the NASCAR tie-in.
What ExxonMobil and Chevron are building now
ExxonMobil's plans are the most specific. It intends to have 6 floating production vessels working at its Stabroek block off Guyana by the end of 2027. Under a 2024 agreement with CF Industries, it expects to carry and permanently store 500,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year from 2028. The company says its Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions will be carbon neutral by 2050. As of 2023 it was designing a large low-carbon hydrogen plant at Baytown, Texas, and in November 2023 it began drilling for lithium in Arkansas. It completed its nearly $60 billion all-stock purchase of Pioneer Natural Resources in May 2024.
Chevron's moves in the 2020s have centred on alternative energy, a gradual withdrawal from Africa and Southeast Asia and a bigger focus on the Americas. In 2022 it bought a network of 55 compressed natural gas stations, and the biodiesel producer Renewable Energy Group.
