Chevron Corporation is an American multinational energy corporation headquartered in San Ramon, California, United States and active in more than 180 countries. It is engaged in every aspect of the oil, gas, and geothermal energy industries, including exploration and production; refining, marketing and transport; chemicals manufacturing and sales; and power generation. Chevron is one of the world's six "supermajor" oil companies. For the past five years, Chevron has been continuously ranked as one of America's 5 largest corporations by Fortune 500 and it is currently ranked 4th after Apple Inc., ExxonMobil and Walmart. In 2011 it was named the 16th largest public company in the world by Forbes Global 2000. Chevron is one of the largest corporations in the world by revenue.Chevron traditionally traces its roots to an oil discovery in Pico Canyon (now the Pico Canyon Oilfield) north of Los Angeles. The discovery led to the formation, in 1879, of the Pacific Coast Oil Company (also known as "Coast Oil"), the oldest predecessor of Chevron Corporation.In 1895, Coast Oil initiated its enduring marine history when it launched California's first steel tanker, the George Loomis, which could ship 6,500 barrels of crude between Ventura and San Francisco. Coast Oil was acquired in 1900 by the Standard Oil Co. (Iowa), a subsidiary of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil company. In 1906, Coast Oil was reincorporated as Standard Oil Co. (California).Another side of the genealogical chart points to the founding of The Texas Fuel Company in 1901, a modest enterprise that started out in three rooms of a corrugated iron building in Beaumont, Texas, United States. This company was known as the Texas Company and later Texaco.In 1911, Standard Oil Co. (California) was severed from its parent corporation, Standard Oil, as a result of the federal government's successful lawsuit against Standard Oil under the Sherman Antitrust Act. It went on to become part of the "Seven Sisters" that dominated the world oil industry in the early 20th century. In 1926, the company fixed its awkward parenthetical name by changing its name to Standard Oil Co. of California, or SoCal. In 1933, Saudi Arabia granted SoCal a concession to find oil, and oil was found in 1938. In 1948, SoCal discovered the world's largest oil field (Ghawar) in Saudi Arabia.SoCal's subsidiary, California-Arabian Standard Oil Company, developed over years, to become the Arabian American Oil Company (ARAMCO) in 1944. In 1973, the Saudi government began buying into ARAMCO. By 1980, the company was entirely owned by the Saudis, and in 1988, the name was changed to Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Saudi Aramco).Standard Oil of California and Gulf Oil merged in 1984, the largest merger in history at that time. Under the antitrust regulation, SoCal divested many of Gulf's operating subsidiaries, and sold some Gulf stations and a refinery in the eastern United States. SoCal changed the name to Chevron Corporation.
Net income $ 26.895 billion (2011)
Total assets 209.474 billion (2011)