Standard Oil Standard Oil Standard Oil Co. Inc. was an American oil producing, transporting, refining, and marketing company. Established in 1870 by John D. Rockefeller and Henry Flagler as a corporation in Ohio, it was the largest oil refinery in the world of its time. Its history as one of the world's first and largest multinational corporations ended in 1911, when the United States Supreme Court, in a landmark case, ruled that Standard Oil was an illegal monopoly. Standard Oil dominated the oil products market initially through horizontal integration in the refining sector, then, in later years vertical integration; the company was
Standard Oil wealth. By 1911, with public outcry at a climax, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled, in "Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States", that Standard Oil of New Jersey must be dissolved under the Sherman Antitrust Act and split into 34 companies. Two of these companies were Standard Oil of New Jersey (Jersey Standard or Esso), which eventually became Exxon, and Standard Oil of New York (Socony), which eventually became Mobil; those two companies later merged into ExxonMobil. Over the next few decades, both companies grew significantly. Jersey Standard, led by Walter C. Teagle, became the