Oil+Industry

J.D. Rockefeller started his monopoly by first only refining the oil and not drilling for it. Then he soon realized that there was more money in drilling for the oil than just refining it. So he started the Standard Oil company, and started drilling for the oil. This made him him more money than he had from just refining the oil.
 * Oil Industry **LR and IJ
 * Drake Oil Well**
 * When**:1850's
 * Where**:Farm Country of Northwestern Pennsylvania; Titusville, Pennsylvania
 * Who**:Colonel Edwin Drake, George Bissell, Benjamin Silliman Jr., James Townsend
 * What**:First discovered it when they were looking for either salt water or fresh water wells, and struck oil. At first they considered it a nuisance, but then they realized the value and importance of oil was higher than they originally thought.
 * Effect**:Used as a replacement for whale oil, used as fuel for lamps, could be refined and sold, used for medicine, and it help turn little farm towns in Pennsylvania, to big boom oil towns, with muddy roads, wooden derricks, and noisy steam engines.
 * J.D. Rockefeller**
 * Who**:J.D. Rockefeller and the Standard Oil Company
 * Where**:Cleveland, Ohio, strung along the Walworth and Kingsbury Runs
 * When**:1869
 * What**:J.D. Rockefeller was the one who was able to gain control of the entire oil industry, and create a monopoly.
 * Why**:The growing need for oil and the cost of it made him be able to maintain his oil industry and make tons of money off of it.
 * How**:He started by just refining the oil, forming the Standard Oil Company in 1870. Then he started to drill for the oil and made his own oil industry. This was called horizontal integration.
 * Standard Oil Industry**
 * Sherman Antitrust Act**:This act tried to make the big trusts illegal, which was known as trust-busting. It tried to break up the big trusts and dissolve them so no one would have big monopolies.This failed, so the government tried a different approach called the Clayton Antitrust Act.
 * Clayton Antitrust Act**:This act tried to make sales cuts, price cutting to freeze out competitors, rebates, interlocking directorates in corporations capitalized at $1 million or more in the same field of business, and intercorporate stock holding illegal. This act made the Federal Trade Commission.
 * Federal Trade Commission**:This organizations job was to keep local businesses competition free and fair.
 * Oil Industry Today**:In North Dakota, portions of South Dakota, and Montana, they are estimating to get between 175 to 500 billion barrels of recoverable oil. With new drilling technology they believe that this oil is held in the 200,000 mile reserve that was initially discovered in 1951. We also import oil from different countries such Saudi Arabia, ad other middle eastern countries. In 2007 we imported about 14 million barrels of oil per day, which means that U.S. customers sent about $340 billion dollars over seas. In 2007, the EOG resources of Texas started to drill a single well in Parshal, N.D., that was expected to contain 700,000 barrels of oil, which caused big money to real into North Dakota. This was the start of an oil boom almost as big as the on that started when oil was first discovered in Saudi Arabia in 1938. In 2030, we are expected to run out of our oil supply in the U.S.


 * 1) **Who had a monopoly in the 1870's, in the oil industry?**
 * 2) **This act tried to make the big trust trust illegal?**
 * 3) **What state and town was oil found in?**
 * 4) **Why did Drake choose Titusville to drill?**
 * 5) **What was the Standard Oil Comapny, and who started it?**

http://www.priweb.org/ed/pgws/history/pennsylvania/pennsylvania.html http://www.history.rochester.edu/fuels/tarbell/MAIN.HTM http://www.sjgs.com/history.html http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/history/A0844878.html http://www.nextenergynews.com/news1/next-energy-news2.13s.html