Background Company founder
William Myron Keck, also founder of the
W. M. Keck Foundation, started his career as a "
roustabout" in the oil business in
Pennsylvania, before making his way to
California. In California, he worked as a
speculator drilling wells on contract for big oil companies. He often would take payment as leases instead of cash. Keck was very successful as an oil prospector. In one instance at the height of the oil boom in the 1920s in Los Angeles, he was the only "
wildcatter" to purchase and retain a lease on 300 acres of Andrew Joughin's farm outside
Torrance. While other prospectors turned away from the property, Keck's "46 highly productive wells were considered one of California's most successful oil-drilling projects. Keck also struck oil in California's
Huntington Beach and
Kettleman Hills oil fields. Author Kevin Krajick has described Keck as "the world's greatest oil prospector, a man whose instincts about the location of petroleum were so uncanny, some believed him clairvoyant."
1921-1962: Founding and techniques The Superior Oil Company was founded in 1921 in
Coalinga, California, by Keck, Keck was one of the first oilmen to move his business to
Houston, Texas, In the Gulf, Superior set consecutive records for the deepest-drilled well. as an
office building by the Keck family to serve as the headquarters for Superior Oil Company. Completed in 1955, the
Modern architecture 12 story structure was designed by
Claud Beelman and became "one of the area's most significant examples of the postwar modernism style popular in corporate architecture during the 1950s." Upon Keck's death, his son William M. Keck Jr. became Superior's chief executive officer, from 1963 until 1981. Upon Keck's death, 11,000 shares of Superior stock, valued at $17 million in 1964, were placed in trust to be divided among the University of Southern California,
Pomona College, Occidental College, and the Episcopal Church of Our Saviour, San Gabriel, California. In 1976, its revenues were $441 million. Howard Keck retired as chairman in 1981, but retained "firm control" of the board. At the end of 1982, the company had domestic crude oil reserves of 139 million barrels, and domestic natural gas reserves of 1.8 trillion cubic feet. Unlike many other oil companies of the time, it had no petroleum refining and marketing operations. Several months before March 1984, the Keck family, which owned a total of about 22 percent of the stock of Superior, approached
Mobil Corporation (now part of
ExxonMobil) with an offer to sell the family stock. In March 1984, Superior Oil was in the process of being acquired by Mobil for $5.7 billion. At that time the company was the nation's largest independent oil producer. The takeover was completed in September 1984, with Superior, then based in Houston, becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of Mobil. It was the fifth-largest oil merger in history, with the combined companies having over $60 billion in combined sales. == See also ==