The expression "Seven Sisters" was coined by the head of the Italian state oil company (
Eni),
Enrico Mattei,. The history of the supermajors traces back to the seven oil companies which formed the "
Consortium for Iran" cartel and dominated the global
petroleum industry from the mid-1940s to the 1970s. The Seven Sisters were: •
Anglo-Persian Oil Company (
BP) •
Gulf Oil (
Chevron) •
Shell (
Royal Dutch Shell) •
Standard Oil of California (
Chevron) •
Standard Oil of New Jersey (Exxon, later
ExxonMobil) •
Standard Oil of New York (
Mobil, later
ExxonMobil) •
Texaco (
Chevron) By the 1930s, the Seven Sisters dominated oil production in the world. The companies owned nearly all rights to the oil in
Iran,
Iraq,
Saudi Arabia, and the
Persian Gulf. In 1959, the Seven Sisters reduced the price of oil for Venezuela and Middle Eastern producers, which provoked anger among oil-producing governments. This prompted the oil-producing governments to take the initial steps to establish OPEC. British writer
Anthony Sampson took over the term when he wrote the book
The Seven Sisters in 1975, to describe the oil
cartel that tried its best to eliminate competitors and keep control of the world's oil resource. The term for the oil cartel was further popularized, along with a fictional logo, in
Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, a 1981
post-apocalyptic dystopian
action film about apocalyptic fuel shortages. Being politically influential,
vertically integrated, well organized, and able to negotiate cohesively as a cartel, the Seven Sisters were initially able to exert considerable power over
Third World oil producers. This was done to not incentivize governments in both the consumer and producer countries to impose regulations on the oil industry. In the 1970s, many countries with large reserves nationalized holdings of all major oil companies. Since then, industry dominance has shifted to the
OPEC cartel and state-owned oil and gas companies in
emerging-market economies, such as
Saudi Aramco,
Gazprom (Russia),
China National Petroleum Corporation,
National Iranian Oil Company,
PDVSA (Venezuela),
Petrobras (Brazil), and
Petronas (Malaysia). In 2007, the
Financial Times called these "the new Seven Sisters". According to consulting firm
PFC Energy, by 2012 only 7% of the world's known oil reserves were in countries that allowed private international companies free rein. Fully 65% were in the hands of state-owned companies.
"The Era of the Super-Major" "The Era of the Super Major" was an industry report published by Douglas Terreson of Morgan Stanley on 13 February 1998. Terreson was the top-rated Integrated Oil analyst according to Institutional Investor magazine at the time and had a broad following within the global investment community. After many years of poor industry performance by the Energy sector, Terreson suggested that business models had become obsolete, and that major strategic change was needed across the global Energy sector for value propositions to become competitive with the other parts of the market. The premise of the report was that "a confluence of industry dynamics would conspire to produce a strategic and financial environment that was conducive to major consolidation activity in the Integrated Oil sector. Significant modifications to the strategic landscape would result, dictating competitive placement and equity market performance for years to come". The report indicated that the phase would be driven by the competitive implications of: (1) the globalization of privatized national oil companies and (2) the rising stature of specialized multinationals. Combinations were expected primarily between Major Oils which would then become "Super-Majors" which was a phrase created at Morgan Stanley in the late 1990s to denote the prototype model for success in the Integrated Oil industry as gains in globalization and scale unfolded. Within 6 months of publication of "The Era of the Super-Major", BP and Amoco merged, representing the largest industrial combination on Wall Street at that time. The combined value of the stocks of those 2 companies rose significantly and that merger was followed by
ExxonMobil, BP-Amoco-Arco,
ConocoPhillips, Chevron-Texaco-
Unocal, Total-Petrofina-Elf and others. The phase represented one of the largest consolidation phases in the history of the Energy sector. Corporate performance was very positive in Energy through 2007, underscoring the premise that the "Super-Major" thesis would create significant economic value for shareholders: • Exxon and Mobil merging to form ExxonMobil in 1999 • Total's merger with
Petrofina in 1999 and with
Elf Aquitaine in 2000, with the resulting company subsequently renamed Total (now
TotalEnergies) • BP's acquisitions of
Amoco in 1998 and of
ARCO in 2000 • Chevron's merger with
Texaco in 2001 •
Conoco and
Phillips Petroleum Company merging in 2002 to form ConocoPhillips This process of consolidation created some of the largest global corporations as defined by the
Forbes Global 2000 ranking, and as of 2007 all were within the top 25. Between 2004 and 2007 the profits of the six supermajors totaled US$494.8 billion. Many of these now-merged companies remain in the
Fortune Global 500, with ExxonMobil ranking 12th, Total ranking 27th, BP ranking 35th, and Chevron ranking 37th in the 2022 edition of the list. == Present composition ==