What are the origins of the world's largest publicly traded oil and gas companies?

Question

What are the origins of the world's largest publicly traded oil and gas companies?

Answer 1

The Exxon Mobil Corporation, or ExxonMobil, is an American oil and gas corporation and a direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil company. Formed on November 30, 1999, by the merger of Exxon and Mobil, ExxonMobil is the world's largest company by revenue, at $404.5 billion for the fiscal year of 2007. It is also the largest publicly held corporation by market capitalization, at $501.17 billion on April 18, 2008. Exxon's reserves were 72 billion oil-equivalent barrels at the end of 2007 and, at current rates of production, are expected to last over 14 years. While it is the largest of the six oil supermajors with daily production of 4.18 million BOE (barrels of oil equivalent) in 2007, this is only approximately 3% of world production and ExxonMobil's daily production is surpassed by several of the largest state-owned petroleum companies. When ranked by oil and gas reserves it is 14th in the world with less than 1% of the total. Currently, the company ranks #1 in the world in net income, which was almost $40 billion last year.

Answer 2

Most of the top publicly traded oil companies are direct descendants from the break up of Standard Oil in the 1910s. Others not descended from Standard Oil include Shell and Total. Most of the rest of the big oil companies are state owned.