---
aliases:
- Standard Oil Company
- Standard Oil of New Jersey
category: Private Organization
created: 2026-06-13
location: United States
start: 1870
summary: Standard Oil was the John D. Rockefeller oil monopoly broken up in 1911 into
  successor companies whose Latin American operations, particularly Standard Oil of
  New Jersey, underwrote the Rockefeller family's mid-century influence over U.S.
  hemispheric policy.
tags:
- Organization
- Company
- Oil
- Rockefeller
- LatinAmerica
title: Standard Oil
updated: 2026-06-13
---

Standard Oil was the petroleum monopoly founded in 1870 by John D. Rockefeller that controlled roughly ninety percent of American oil refining before the U.S. Supreme Court ordered its dissolution in 1911 under the Sherman Antitrust Act. The breakup created successor companies, including Standard Oil of New Jersey (later Exxon), Standard Oil of New York (Mobil), and Standard Oil of California (Chevron), whose combined assets preserved the [Rockefeller](/organizations/rockefeller-foundation/) family's financial power.[^1]

### Latin America and the Rockefeller Network

Standard Oil of New Jersey's extensive holdings in [Venezuela](/places/venezuela/) and across Latin America made the region central to the family's interests, and the young [Nelson Rockefeller](/people/nelson-rockefeller/) became a director of the company's Venezuelan subsidiary, Creole Petroleum, in the 1930s. His effort to manage the political risk to those holdings led to his 1940 appointment as Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, the wartime office that fused commercial interests, intelligence collection, and propaganda across the hemisphere.[^2]

[^1]: Chernow, Ron. *Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.* Random House, 1998.
[^2]: Colby, Gerard, and Charlotte Dennett. *Thy Will Be Done: The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil.* HarperCollins, 1995.