The Thirty-Four

1911

Thirty-four

The opinion’s first line names the New Jersey parent and “thirty-three other corporations” as the appellants. The decree it upheld named 37 subsidiaries, and Taft repeated that number. Time, the Briscoe Center and the Supreme Court Historical Society count 34 companies after the breakup, and Britannica says the parent gave up 33 holdings. Eight of the pieces kept “Standard Oil” in their names.

34Separate companies the 1911 breakup left, by the Briscoe Center’s count

1911

Back to the owners

The order did not sell the pieces to outsiders: the parent had to hand the stock of its subsidiaries back to its stockholders. Taft called it a “pro rata distribution” of that stock “to and among its stockholders.” But the decree also barred the pieces and their stockholders from conspiring or combining to monopolize because of their stock, and the Court read it as barring them from recreating the combination “by any device whatever.”

5 Dec 1911

The forecast

On 5 December 1911 Taft told Congress that some people assumed the shared owners would keep one hand on all the companies. He called that “erroneous.” The companies were under injunction, he said, had different managers and directors, and shareholders “reaching into the thousands” could not hide concerted action. He expected competition to follow, and the stock to change hands. That was a forecast, not a finding, and it was about the trust’s own stockholders.

31 May 1937

The fortune

Time wrote after Rockefeller’s death that, once the pieces reached the stock market, they were “whooped skyward.” It says he gave away no less than $530,000,000, and that the rest of his wealth went to his heirs, principally his son, leaving him “probably worth only a few million.” The Supreme Court Historical Society says he was worth $1.5 billion at death; Bloomberg, citing his obituary, gives $1.5 billion as what he made in his career, which is not the same thing. A 1907 stock list, as a newspaper printed it, puts his share of the parent at about a quarter (247,692 of 983,383 shares); Too Big to Fail tells it.

15 Oct 1914

Section 8

Three years later Congress passed the Clayton Act. Its Section 8 is the rule against interlocking directors: no one may sit at the same time as a director or officer of two competing corporations above a set size, with exceptions where the overlap is small. The text shown is as amended in 1990. Section 8 says nothing about shareholders who own both; Section 7 of the same Act, which the FTC’s 2024 complaints invoked, deals with mergers and acquisitions.

1933

The pieces

The 1911 dissolution agreement assigned marketing by region: New York and New England to Standard Oil of New York, the mid-Atlantic to the New Jersey company. In 1933 Jersey and Socony-Vacuum formed Stanvac, a 50/50 venture that ran in nearly 50 countries until 1962. Names changed: Exxon in 1972, Mobil in 1966, Chevron in 1984, Amoco in 1985. The Supreme Court Historical Society says the split left 34 companies that would compete with each other.

12 Oct 1973

Four chairmen, one note

In October 1973 the chairmen of Exxon, Mobil, Texaco and Standard Oil of California wrote to the White House together. Three of the four ran heirs of the 1911 decree. All four co-owned Aramco: Exxon, Texaco and Socal at 30 percent each and Mobil at 10, as the State Department lists the split. This note records no agreement among them on prices or output. The same State Department volume does record joint dealings: a formula, the APQ, that set how much oil the Iran consortium’s members could lift each year by their shares, and a joint position for talks with OPEC in 1971, worked out after the Justice Department gave limited antitrust assurances. The Oil Weapon tells that autumn.

30 Dec 1998

Across the Atlantic

British Petroleum finished buying Standard Oil of Ohio in 1987 and merged with Amoco, once Standard Oil of Indiana, in 1998. The FTC alleged lost competition in wholesale gasoline in 30 eastern markets and in terminals in nine, and BP and Amoco agreed to sell 134 gas stations and nine terminals; one commissioner dissented on the gasoline count. In 2000 the FTC, after first seeking to block it, cleared BP Amoco’s $27 billion merger with ARCO, whose roots include the old Atlantic Refining, once BP Amoco agreed to sell ARCO’s Alaska North Slope assets.

Nov 1999

Exxon and Mobil

Exxon, the old Standard Oil of New Jersey, and Mobil, the old Standard Oil of New York, agreed around 1 December 1998 to merge. The FTC’s complaint said the merger would lessen competition in 12 markets, from gasoline in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic to jet-turbine oil. The consent order made them sell, among other things, Exxon’s Benicia refinery in California and Mobil’s gasoline marketing across the Mid-Atlantic. In most of those markets the FTC’s analysis treats the two as direct rivals, and it says those markets were “not fully competitive even prior to the merger.” A consent order is a settlement and is not an admission that the law was broken.

12 marketsWhere the FTC’s complaint said the Exxon–Mobil merger would lessen competition

7 Sep 2001

Chevron and Texaco

Chevron, which grew from Standard Oil of California, agreed in October 2000 to merge with Texaco in a $45 billion deal. In September 2001 the FTC let it go ahead if Texaco gave up its stakes in two joint ventures with Shell, Equilon and Motiva, and sold other assets. Chevron’s shareholders were to hold about 61 percent of the combined company and Texaco’s about 39.

22 Nov 2024

Two more pieces

The Ohio Oil Company and the Continental Oil Company were both on the Court’s list. Standard Oil bought Ohio Oil in 1889, and it became Marathon Oil in 1962. Phillips and Conoco merged in 2002 after the FTC required sales in the Rocky Mountains and elsewhere; ConocoPhillips closed its purchase of Marathon Oil on 22 November 2024. We found no FTC finding on that deal, or on the 1998 Marathon–Ashland venture that the FTC’s 1999 paper lists among the era’s consolidations.

13 Aug 2004

What FTC staff said

In August 2004 the FTC’s economists reported that oil-company mergers had not significantly changed worldwide concentration in crude oil, and that concentration at most levels, “despite some increases over time,” had remained low to moderate. The same report counts 15 large mergers since 1981 where the FTC said competition would have been cut as announced. In 11 it won sales of assets, and in 4 the deal was dropped. The agency was grading its own record, and one commissioner abstained on the vote.

15Large oil mergers the FTC alleged would have cut competition as announced, 1981 to 2004: 11 ended in sales of assets, 4 were dropped

2 May 2024

A board seat, 2024

Exxon agreed to buy Pioneer for $64.5 billion, and the merger agreement required it to put Pioneer’s founder, Scott Sheffield, on its board. The FTC alleged that he had tried to line up oil output with OPEC, and that his seat would link Exxon’s board to that of The Williams Companies, where he also sat. Sheffield filed a 23-page comment that defended himself and disputed parts of the complaint. Exxon agreed to the order, which barred the seat, and the Commission voted 3 to 2.

30 Sep 2024

Chevron and Hess

Five months later the FTC proposed a similar order for Chevron’s $53 billion purchase of Hess. Its complaint alleged that John Hess had spoken with OPEC’s secretaries general and a Saudi official about oil-market stability, and that on Chevron’s board he would amplify that message. Commissioners Holyoak and Ferguson dissented from the order, which passed 3 to 2. In March 2025 Chevron and Hess answered that their combined share was far below the level presumed to harm competition, and that Mr. Hess had spent his career urging more investment in supply.

17 Jul 2025

Set aside

In January 2025 the outgoing majority made both orders final, 3 to 2. On 17 July the Commission, by then three members, two of them the January dissenters, set both aside, 3 to 0. It had denied Sheffield’s own petition for lack of standing and acted on its own, with Exxon’s consent; for Chevron it granted the companies’ petition. It found the complaints pleaded no Section 7 violation and no material rise in concentration, and the Exxon interlock count, resting on Section 5 not Section 8, gave no facts that Exxon and Williams compete.

3 to 0Vote of a three-member Commission, two of them the January dissenters, to set aside the Exxon–Pioneer order on 17 July 2025; the Chevron–Hess order went the same day. In January both had passed 3 to 2

14 Jul 2025

Not charged, not cleared

The FTC said its complaint did not formally charge Sheffield, and both orders said the complaints did not allege that either man’s statements were “an unlawful invitation to collude or illegal collusion.” The Commission also wrote that talks with OPEC states could, in another case, be challenged on their own. Nothing here decides what Sheffield or Hess did. Sheffield’s suit against the FTC was filed in January 2025, and we found no ruling.

28 Jul 2025

The boards today

The FTC’s 2025 orders place Exxon in Spring, Texas, and Chevron in Houston. The Hess purchase closed on 18 July 2025, after a ruling in an arbitration over the Stabroek field in Guyana, and Chevron’s board elected John Hess a director ten days later. Darren Woods is Exxon’s chairman and chief executive, and Mike Wirth holds both posts at Chevron. Read side by side, the directors named in the two companies’ 2026 proxy statements share no name.

10 Mar 2026

Who holds them

ExxonMobil’s 2026 proxy names three holders of more than 5%: Vanguard, BlackRock and State Street. Chevron’s names the same three at 8.56%, 7.00% and 7.50%. The three hold for the clients of their funds, on filings of 2024 and 2025 about positions from December 2023 to September 2025; in March 2026 Vanguard reported that its units will now report separately. Chevron also lists Berkshire Hathaway at 6.70%, which holds for itself.

10.4%Vanguard’s share of ExxonMobil, in the company’s 2026 proxy statement. BlackRock held 6.5% and State Street 5.1%

2017

Not the holders of 1911

These are not the shareholders of 1911, and no source here traces one group to the other. In 2017 the same three firms were together the largest shareholder in 88 percent of S&P 500 companies, oil or not. They manage shares for clients and vote part of them: BlackRock reported sole voting power over 254,681,764 of its 272,498,849 Exxon shares. No filing here shows any of them directing Exxon or Chevron, or acting together, and a place on a shareholder list is not evidence of control.

2016

One worry

In 2016 the law professor Einer Elhauge argued that when a few investors hold large stakes in competitors, the competitors compete less. A 2018 study of U.S. airlines from 2001 to 2014 reported fares 3% to 7% higher because of such ownership. Whether that reasoning applies to Exxon and Chevron is a separate question, and we found no study that measures it for them.

2022

One doubt

In 2022 three economists reported that the link between common ownership and airline fares came from the airlines’ market shares, not from who owned them. The 2018 authors replied that it holds once the test is built properly, and in 2021 Azar and Xavier Vives reported lower airline prices with common ownership by BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street, higher with other shareholders. In letters to the FTC, BlackRock (2019) cited a consultant who found no significant link, and Vanguard (2021) called the idea an unproven hypothesis. A 2020 study for the European Parliament called the question an open debate.

Nov 1999

The best evidence for a link

The 1911 agreement split the country into regions among the pieces. Jersey and Socony-Vacuum ran Stanvac 50/50 in nearly 50 countries. In 1973 the heirs wrote a joint note and shared the Iran consortium’s lifting formula. In 1999 the FTC said the markets Exxon and Mobil sold in were “not fully competitive” before the merger, with prices set off rivals’ prices, which it called “an earmark of oligopolistic market behavior.”

17 Jul 2025

The best evidence against a link

The 2025 Commission put Exxon and Pioneer’s combined share in the low single digits, and a dissent it quoted put Chevron and Hess at about 2 percent. FTC staff in 2004 found most levels of the industry low to moderately concentrated, and Time said in 1937 that independents would probably have curbed the old company anyway. The two 2026 boards share no director. Each company’s proxy names the other a competitor: Chevron for investors’ money and talent, Exxon among the oil majors it measures itself against.

2026

The test

Is it still one monopoly? No court has said so, and in the papers we read we found no court or agency decision on whether the heirs act as one. Whether fund managers holding both companies soften competition in oil has not been measured: we found no study of Exxon and Chevron, and the airline studies disagree. Taft’s forecast was about the trust’s own stockholders, and no source here tests it. A company’s proxy is its own account, and the FTC’s papers are merger reviews, not answers to this question.