Tag: Standard Oil

better doing

How Rockefeller and his partners built Standard Oil.

November 23, 2025

How Rockefeller and his partners built Standard Oil. In contrast to popular accounts, Rockefeller’s empire wasn’t built on shady railroad deals but “returns to scale and capital efficiency.” From 1865 to 1872, their production expanded 20x, dropping costs by over […]

fun facts

The day big oil was broken

January 19, 2020

I have mentioned the case of Standard Oil a few times in the past year when the topic of Amazon’s antitrust risks came up. Right after the U.S. government broke Standard Oil into 34 companies, the shareholders (Rockefeller the largest […]