Mobil Producing Texas & New Mexico Inc history

Exxon, Oil Shocks, and Diversification: 1972-89

In 1973, however, OPEC placed an embargo on oil shipments to the United States for six months and began gradual annexation of United States-owned oil properties.

In 1976 Mobil Oil Corporation again changed its name, to Mobil Corporation.

With the price of oil peaking around 1981 and then tumbling for most of the decade, Exxon's sales dropped sharply.

By 1988 Mobil had pulled out of the retail gasoline business in 20 states and derived 88 percent of its retail revenue from just 14 states, mostly in the Northeast.

On March 24, 1989, the tanker Exxon Valdez runs aground in Prince William Sound in Alaska.

Asset sales of $570 million in 1991 included a Wyoming coal mine and hundreds of wells in western Texas.

At the end of 1993 Lee R. Raymond took over as CEO from the retiring Rawl.

In June 1994 a federal jury found that the huge oil spill had been caused by "recklessness" on the part of Exxon.

Fan, Eliza, “Mobil Restructures Its Organization to Shift Power to Regional Managers,” Oil Daily, June 4, 1996.

In June 1997, in fact, Exxon formally appealed the $5 billion verdict.

The megamerger was one of a spate of petroleum industry deals brought about by an oil glut that forced down the price of a barrel of crude by late 1998 to about $11, the cheapest price in history with inflation factored in.

By 2001, cost savings from the merger reached $4.6 billion.

Africa, the Mideast, and Russia accounted for less than 20 percent of Exxon Mobil's oil and gas production in 2004.

In 2017, these efforts will yield a breakthrough involving modification of an algae strain that more than doubles its oil content without significantly inhibiting the strain’s growth.