Offspring of Standard Oil

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Jinjoo Lee, Oil Tie-Up Isn't as Crazy as It Sounds; Exxon-Chevron merger tall is a '90s flashback, Wall treet Journal, Feb 2, 2021 (in the page "Heard on the Street; Financial analysis & commentary" that appears weekdays).
https://www.wsj.com/articles/exx ... -sounds-11612201759

Quote:

"Exxon Mobil and Chevron, the two largest descendants of Rockefeller's Standard Oil monopoly, discussed a potential merger last year, The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday [Jan 31, 2021; online, and published in print on Feb 1] . The companies' shares barely moved Monday morning, perhaps reflecting skepticism that such a deal can happen.

"As over-the-top as the idea sounds—it could be the largest corporate merger ever—it isn't inconceivable. Today’s oil market conditions look similar to those that made oil megamergers possible starting in the late 1990s, when the Asian financial crisis [starting on July 2, 1997 in Thailand] led to a sudden collapse in global growth and oil demand. The resulting glut considerably weakened energy giants, leading to cost cuts and paving the way for big tie-ups. Both Covid-19 and Asia’s crisis knocked about a third off the average Brent price in 2020 and 1998, respectively.

"That backdrop was what preceded Exxon’s merger with Mobil in 1999, number one and two in the U.S. at the time. Chevron’s 2001 nuptials with Texaco brought together what were then numbers two and three. Combined, Exxon and Chevron would satisfy about 4.3% of global oil demand—only a percentage point higher than the combined share of Exxon and Mobil a year after their merger.

"A combination would bring at least four of Standard Oil's pieces back together. At the height of its dominance, Standard Oil controlled 95% of US refining -- long before anyone realized there were vast petroleum deposits in places like Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela.

Note: There is no need to read the rest, which would be two more paragraphs.
(a) "A combination would bring at least four of Standard Oil's pieces back together."  

The WSJ article is wrong about Texaco, which had nothing to do with Standard Oil Co.
(i) Here is a chart of some of the offspring of Standard Oil Co (1870-1911) after antitrust breakup into 34 pieces.

Jeff Desjardins, The Evolution of Standard Oil. Nov 24, 2017.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/chart-evolution-standard-oil/

• Is "offsprings" correct?  In other words, can one add s at the end of noun offspring?
(A) offspring (n; plural offspring or offsprings)
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/offspring
(B) However, both Cambridge and Oxford dictionaries (online) say the plural of offspring remains offspring.

offspring (C [for countable], plural offspring)
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/offspring

Oxford does not say so explicitly, but the examples given (Oxford takes from the Web) show plural has the same spelling as singular, and that you know from the context.
offspring (n): "a person's child or children
<Many parents also introduce limited alcohol at home when their offspring are young, on the grounds that they must learn how to handle the substance.>
<Jim warned him prior to introducing him to Hannah that the youngest Dawson offspring [Hannah] is a charmer.>
<True, he had expected me - more than any of his other offspring - to become the politician of the family.>"
https://www.lexico.com/definition/offspring
(C) charmer (n): "If you refer to someone as a charmer, you mean that they behave in a charming way, especially in order to get what they want. [disapproval] <He comes across as an intelligent, sophisticated, charmer.>"  (brackets original)
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/charmer
(ii) Standard Oil Company of New Jersey changed its name to Exxon in 1973. ESSO wsa

There are two theories about ESSO formation.
(A) Our History. ExxonMobile, undated
https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/About-us/Who-we-are/Our-history   
("1926   Embodying the phonetic rendition of the initials 'S' and 'O' in Standard Oil, Jersey Standard brings out a new blend of fuel under the trade name Esso")
(B) Seuss I am, an Oilman. American Oil & Gas Historical Society, undated
https://www.aoghs.org/petroleum-art/seuss-the-oilman/
("The future Dr Seuss added a host of zoological oddities to Standard Oil's lexicon while promoting Esso products (Esso was an acronym for Eastern States Standard Oil)" in ads)
(iii) The origin of Mobil name.
(A) The origin of Mobil brand, which later became company name.

ExxonMobil Historical Collection, 1790-2014. Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin, undated
https://legacy.lib.utexas.edu/taro/utcah/00352/cah-00352.html   
("Organized in 1866, Vacuum Oil produced the first petroleum-based lubricants for horse-drawn carriages and, later, for steam engines. Notably, Vacuum Oil introduced the Mobil brand, which Socony-Vacuum continued to use")
(B) Vacuum Oil Company
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_Oil_Company
("Vacuum Oil was founded in 1866 by Matthew Ewing and Hiram Bond Everest, of Rochester, New York. Lubrication oil was an accidental discovery while attempting to distil kerosene. Everest noted the residue from the extraction was suitable as a lubricant. * * * It [company] originated the Mobil trademark in 1899 (as 'Mobilgas;' 'Mobiloil' came later)" )
(C) lubricant
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lubricant  
(section 1 History: "A breakthrough came with the development of vacuum distillation of petroleum, as described by the Vacuum Oil Company. This technology allowed the purification of very nonvolatile substances, which are common in many lubricants")
(iv)
(A) History. Chevron, undated
https://www.chevron.com/about/history
("Pico Canyon, a remote portion of the rugged Santa Susana Mountains. In September 1876, driller Alex Mentry succeeded in striking oil in Pico No 4 [well], despite rattlesnakes, wasps, mud and underbrush")
(B) Pico Canyon Oilfield
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pico_Canyon_Oilfield  
(map; "in the Santa Susana Mountains [note 'in'] * * * is considered the birthplace of California's oil industry. * * * Well No 4 continued in operation for 114 years until it was capped in 1990")
(C) How did Chevron get its name?

Chevron and Calso. Landscape Change Program ("a virtual collection of images that documents 200 years of Vermont's changing face"), University of Vermont, undated
https://glcp.uvm.edu/landscape_n ... s/calso_chevron.php  
("Standard Oil of California emerged in 1911 upon the breakup of the Standard Oil Company and trademarked the Chevron name and the three-bar chevron logo.  During WWII, the company adopted the 'winged V' logo to symbolize victory")

CalSO or Calso
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CalSO
(may may refer to California Standard Oil, now Chevron Corporation)

Logos of the Legacy Companies of Chevron. CRA Global Affiliates (where GRA stands for Chevron Retirees Association), undated
www.craglobalaff.org/Pictures/Row014B/LogoLegacyA.htm  
("In 1931, after the merger of PCO and Standard Oil Company (California) the now familiar Chevron logo appeared in its original form with the STANDARD name. This was the first logo adopted by Standard Oil of California")


(b)
(i) Texaco: A Brief History. Los Angeles Times, Apr 13, 1987
https://www.latimes.com/archives ... 3-fi-576-story.html
("Texaco--the name it adopted in 1959-- was one of only two big US oil companies (the other was Gulf) that were not part of John D Rockefeller’s Standard Oil empire")
(ii) Beaumont, Texas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaumont,_Texas  
("on the Neches River about 85 miles (137 km) east of Houston (city center to city center), Beaumont had a population of 117,267 at the time of the 2010 census")

, whose spindletop oil field struck oil on Jan 10, 1901.
(c) "At the height of its dominance, Standard Oil controlled 95% of US refining -- long before anyone realized there were vast petroleum deposits in places like Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela."  The WSJ article is wrong about Iran.
(i) Standard Oil of California (SOCAL), via a local subsidiary, struck oil on Mar 3, 1938 near Dammam (then a village and today the 6th most populous city of the country.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dammam
(ii) Petroleum was discovered on May 26, 1908 in Masjed Soleyman.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masjed_Soleyman
An oil company was formed the next year, the predecessor of British Petroleum Co (latter abbreviated as BP).

Persian-English dictionary:
* مسجد (n; from Arabic masjid): "(romanization: masjed) mosque"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/مسجد
(iii) history of the Venezuelan oil industry
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hi ... zuelan_oil_industry  
("On 15 April 1914, upon the completion of the Zumaque-I (now called MG-I) oil well, the first Venezuelan oilfield of importance, Mene Grande, was discovered by Caribbean Petroleum [Co] in the Maracaibo Basin")

Click Mene Grande will lead to a Wikipedia page in Spanish, which Google Translate transforms the title of the page to "Big Mene" and a sentence of the page to: "Mene is the name that the original peoples of the area gave to oil."
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