- 著者
-
豊田 太郎
- 出版者
- 経営史学会
- 雑誌
- 経営史学 (ISSN:03869113)
- 巻号頁・発行日
- vol.39, no.2, pp.28-58, 2004-09-24 (Released:2010-05-07)
- 参考文献数
- 70
The purpose of this paper is to examine oil field management in the oil regions of Pennsylvania in the latter nineteenth century, especially taking the economic interests of landownership into consideration. Much research has been done on the history of the American petroleum industry, mainly on Standard Oil Company. The research has, however, not sufficiently analyzed the crude-producing sector, which had for a long time been independent of Standard Oil's control. In this paper, we focus on the management of the United States Petroleum Company, which first developed the Pithole oil field, the site famous for the “oil rush.” What sources we depend on are the original materials preserved in the Drake Well Museum.U.S. Petroleum was not an oil-producing company but was essentially in real estate. Although the company developed the Pithole oil field and completed the United States Well as a discovery well, all these efforts were made to cause the oil rush; creating high land prices (through the oil rush) was the ultimate purpose of the Company. In fact, after the completion of U.S. Well, the company no longer continued in petroleum development but rather divided Thomas Holmden farm (the center of petroleum development) into small lots to sub-lease to oilmen at exorbitant prices. The severe terms of lease and the “rule of capture” stimulated many oilmen to overdrill, and, as the result, crude production increased rapidly. This situation was favorable to both U.S. Petroleum, as the receiver of royalties, and the downstream sector, which demanded a large supply of cheap crude oil.The economic interests of landownership in oil fields continued to stimulate the crude-producing business and soon came to guarantee (excessive) crude supply to the downstream sector, Standard Oil. The combination of the interest in monopolistic capital and that of landownership in the development of the American petroleum industry lasted until the New Deal era.