ExxonMobil

Today we operate in most of the world's countries and are best known by our familiar brand names: Exxon, Esso and Mobil. We make the products that drive modern transportation, power cities, lubricate industry and provide petrochemical building blocks that lead to thousands of consumer goods.

  1859 - Colonel Edwin Drake and Uncle Bill Smith drill the first successfull oil well in Titusville, Pennsylvania. The colonel's discovery triggers an oil boom that parallels the gold rush of a decade earlier.

 1870 - Rockfell and his associates form the Standar Oil Company (Ohio), with combined facilities consituting the largest refining capacity of any single firm in the world. The name Standar is chosen to signify high, uniform qualify.

 1879 - Standard Oil Co. purchases a three-quarters interest in Vacuum Oil Company for $200,000. As a lubricants pioneer, Vacuum Oil introduces a number of popular products, including the revolutionary Gargoyle 600-W Steam Cylinder Oil.

 1882 - Standard Oil lubricates Thomas Edison's first central generating system. Also in this year, Standard Oil Trust forms to include the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey (Jersey Standard) and the Standard Oil Company of New York (Socony).

 1885 - The Standard Oil Trust moves its headquarters to 26 Broadway, New York City. The nine-story office building becomes a landmark. The same year, Vacuum develops Gargoyle Arctic engine oils for newly designed generators and motors that operate at speeds of up to 1,000 rpm.

 1903 - The Wright brothers, Wilbur and Orvillle, use both Jersey Standard fuel and Mobiloil (Vacuum) lubricants for their historic first flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

 1911 - Following a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision, Standard Oil breaks up into 34 unrelated companies, including Jersey Standard, Socony and Vacuum Oil.  The year also marks the first time Jersey Standard's sales of kerosene are surpassed by gasoline, a product that in the early days had often been discarded as a nuisance.

 1915 - Ralph De Palma, winner of the Indianapolis 500, is the first of many Indy winners to use Mobil products. His average speed: 89.84 mph.

 1919 - Jersey Standard acquires a 50 percent interest in Humble Oil & Refining Company of Texas. It was during this year that Humble, led by its pioneering Chief Geologist Wallace Pratt, employed micropaleontology, the study of microscopic fossils contained in cuttings and core samples from drilling, as an aid in finding oil.

 1920 - Jersey Standard researchers produce rubbing alcohol, or isopropyl alcohol — the first commercial petrochemical.

 1927 - Humble geophysicists use a refraction seismograph and discover an oil field in Sugarland, Texas.

 1928 - Amelia Earhart uses Mobiloil to protect Friendship when she makes her historic solo flight across the Atlantic. The previous year, Charles Lindbergh used Mobiloil in the Spirit of St. Louis on the first solo flight across the Atlantic.

 1936 - First commercial unit in a cat-cracking refinery begins operation at Socony-Vacuum’s Paulsboro, New Jersey, refinery. The unit used a process developed by French scientist Eugene P. Houdry with the financial backing of Socony-Vacuum. The process added a clay-like catalyst to the cracking process to boost gasoline yields and octane rating.

 1937 - Jersey Standard researchers produce an artificial rubber, butyl. Today, butyl is used in the creation of tires, surgical tapes, protective coatings and more.

 1938 - The world's first commercial production of alkylate begins at a Humble plant in Baytown, Texas. Alkylation made possible the manufacturing of iso-octane, used as a blending agent to produce 100-octane aviation gasoline.

 1942 - The world’s first fluid catalytic cracker goes onstream at Louisiana Standard’s Baton Rouge refinery. The process, developed by four Jersey Standard researchers known as the “four horsemen,” improved on the Houdry method for cat cracking and eventually became the industry standard for producing gasoline. Fortune magazine called it “the most revolutionary chemical-engineering achievement of the last 50 years.”

 1958 - Pan American Airways flies its first trans-Atlantic Boeing 707 flight from New York to London. The flight is fueled by Mobil aviation fuel.

 1959 - An advertising copywriter in Chicago comes up with the advertising slogan “Put a tiger in your tank.”

 1963 - Humble invents 3-D seismic technology, a revolution that completely changes the way the industry searches for oil and gas resources. (This breakthrough technology, coupled with the use of massive parallel computers in seismic imaging, has helped our geologists sharply reduce finding costs since the 1980s while increasing new field resource additions.)

 1966 - Mobil celebrates 100 years since the founding of the Vacuum Oil Company in 1866 and changes its name to Mobil Oil Corporation. The company launches a wide-reaching identity program to emphasize the Mobil trade name.

 1972 - Jersey Standard officially changes its name to Exxon Corporation. The name change is approved by Jersey Standard shareholders in a special shareholders’ meeting.

 1975 - Mobil participates in completion of Beryl A, the world's first concrete production platform. The 50-story-high structure was the prototype for other concrete deepwater facilities operating in the North Sea.

 1976 - Mobil invents a process for converting methanol into high-octane gasoline through the use of the company’s versatile ZSM-5 catalyst.

 1980 - Exxon opens its own facility for environmental health research at East Millstone, New Jersey. Exxon Biomedical Sciences, Inc. conducts research to further assure the safety of Exxon operations and products.

 1986 - Exxon Research and Engineering invents a powerful new imaging technique called 3-D microtomography to study the internal structure of opaque objects without damaging them.

 1989 - Exxon introduces Exxpol, a single-site metallocene catalyst used to produce consistent, controllable molecular structures that make plastic and rubber products tougher and impact-resistant, with less haze and with excellent organoleptics (low off-taste and odor).

 1995 - Exxon establishes the Save The Tiger Fund in partnership with the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. The Save The Tiger Fund is dedicated to supporting the conservation of Asia’s remaining wild tigers. Since its establishment, ExxonMobil has provided $1 million annually in support of the Save The Tiger Fund.

 2001 - ExxonMobil Research & Engineering Company (EMRE) develops the SCANfining process, which uses a new proprietary catalyst to selectively remove more than 95 percent of the sulfur from gasoline while minimizing octane loss.

 2002 - ExxonMobil, joined by other sponsors, initiates the Global Climate and Energy Project (GCEP) at Stanford University — a pioneering research effort to identify technologies that can meet energy demand with dramatically lower greenhouse gas emissions.

 2007 - Exxon Neftegas Limited (a subsidiary of Exxon Mobil Corporation) completes the drilling of the Z-11 well, the longest measured depth extended-reach drilling (ERD) well in the world. (Located on Sakhalin Island offshore eastern Russia, the record-setting Z-11 achieved a total measured depth of 37,016 feet (11,282 meters), or more than seven miles.)

 2009 - Exxon Mobil Corporation (NYSE:XOM) and Synthetic Genomics Inc. (SGI) announced the opening of a greenhouse facility today enabling the next level of research and testing in their algae biofuels program.

 2010 - ExxonMobil finalizes its agreement with XTO Energy Inc., creating a new organization to focus on global development and production of unconventional resources. A plan to build and deploy a rapid response system that will be available to capture and contain oil in the event of a potential future underwater well blowout in the deep-water Gulf of Mexico was announced by Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Shell. ExxonMobil leads the containment system efforts on behalf of the sponsor companies.

 2011 - Exxon Mobil Corporation announced two major oil discoveries and a gas discovery in the deep-water Gulf of Mexico after drilling the company's first post-moratorium deep-water exploration well. This is one of the largest discoveries in the Gulf of Mexico in the last decade.

Overview

ExxonMobil promotes a work environment that helps our employees and their families pursue healthy lifestyles, including prevention of infectious diseases. Our goal is to address the diverse health risks prevalent in the locations where we operate and to protect the health, safety and productivity of our workers while preserving our business operations.  We have addressed the threats of malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, Ebola, Zika and other outbreaks in our workplace through effective and efficient prevention and control programs. Since 2007, no malaria deaths have been reported among our workers. Additionally, none of the approximately 100 active tuberculosis cases diagnosed in our workforce since 2010 have infected another worker on our sites, and no operational disruption has been reported due to an outbreak during that time.

Our approach

Our health policy communicates the corporate expectations for identifying and evaluating health risks related to our operations that can potentially affect our employees, contractors or the public. We also provide voluntary health programs to our employees that promote enhanced well-being, while improving safety and productivity.   

To ensure our occupational health risks are adequately assessed, prioritized and documented, our industrial hygiene professionals apply an exposure assessment strategy to identify and evaluate health risks related to our operations, as prescribed by our Operations Integrity Management System. In each country, we develop workplace health programs, taking into consideration the different local health care systems, health needs and available resources.  

ExxonMobil’s U.S.-based Culture of Health program is designed to support the health, safety and wellness of our employees and reduce health plan costs. We provide health education, bio-monitoring, nutrition and fitness programs that are designed to meet the needs of a variety of work environments such as offices and manufacturing sites. Additionally, we offer employees health coaching and disease management assistance.   

Supporting the health of our employees outside the United States is also a priority. We have Culture of Health programs in Argentina, Malaysia, Nigeria and the United Kingdom. These four programs are in their implementation phase. We continue to look for new opportunities to expand the reach of our Culture of Health program. In all cases, the benefits plans we offer comply with or exceed applicable country laws or regulations for our workers and dependents.

Our Safety Philosophy

At ExxonMobil, we believe that it is possible to obtain the energy the world needs while also protecting people and the environment.

We believe the answer lies in three uncompromising pursuits: exceptional technology, rigorous standards and an unwavering commitment to best-practice safety procedures.

The Valdez incident of 1989 was a low point in ExxonMobil’s history, but it was also a turning point. In its aftermath, we launched a top-to-bottom review of our operations and then implemented a system that today guides every operating decision we make on a daily basis. That system is called OIMS (Operations Integrity Management System).

It consists of 11 separate elements that measure and mitigate safety, security, health and environmental risk to people, the environment and the communities in which we operate. Fundamental to OIMS is assessing the risk involved in our operations — from offshore platforms to our offices — and then developing plans to mitigate and manage that risk over the operation’s life.

ExxonMobil’s systematic and disciplined approach to safety has produced significant improvements, but we know there is risk, too, in complacency. So, as we continue to explore for new sources of energy, we will also continue to explore new ways to increase safety. That is our obligation and that is our commitment.

Personal Safety

ExxonMobil expects every employee and third-party contractor to identify, assess and mitigate the risks associated with our daily operations. In 2016, we achieved our best-ever safety performance. We have reduced our workforce lost-time incident rate by more than 80 percent since 2000.

Our workforce safety programs have been implemented and refined over many years of experience. We provide the tools, training and culture that allow our global workforce to execute work safely and intervene or stop work when necessary. We emphasize continuous improvement and concentrate our efforts on preventing higher potential events.