Seven Sisters (oil companies)

"Seven Sisters" was a common term for the seven transnational oil companies of the "Consortium for Iran" oligopoly or cartel, which dominated the global petroleum industry from the mid-1940s to the mid-1970s. Alluding to the seven mythological Pleiades sisters fathered by the titan Atlas, the business usage was popularized in the 1950s by businessman Enrico Mattei, then-head of the Italian state oil company Eni. The industry group consisted of:
Preceding the 1973 oil crisis, the Seven Sisters controlled around 85 per cent of the world's petroleum reserves. Since then, industry dominance has shifted to the OPEC cartel and state-owned oil and gas companies in emerging-market economies, such as Saudi Aramco, Gazprom (Russia), China National Petroleum Corporation, National Iranian Oil Company, PDVSA (Venezuela), Petrobras (Brazil), and Petronas (Malaysia). In 2007, the "Financial Times" called these "the new Seven Sisters".
According to consulting firm PFC Energy, by 2012 only 7% of the world's known oil reserves were in countries that allowed private international companies free rein. Fully 65% were in the hands of state-owned companies.
Composition and history.
In 1951, Iran nationalized its oil industry previously controlled by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (now BP), and Iranian oil was subjected to an international embargo. In an effort to bring Iranian oil production back to international markets, the U.S. State Department suggested the creation of a consortium of major oil companies, several of which were daughter corporations of John D. Rockefeller's original Standard Oil monopoly.
The head of the Italian state oil company (Eni), Enrico Mattei, sought membership for his company, but was rejected by what he dubbed the "Seven Sisters", the American and British companies that largely controlled the Middle East's oil production after World War II. British writer Anthony Sampson took over the term when he wrote the book "The Seven Sisters" in 1975, to describe the oil cartel that tried its best to eliminate competitors and keep control of the world's oil resource. The term for the oil cartel was further popularized, along with a fictional logo, in "", a 1981 film about apocalyptic fuel shortages.
Being politically influential, vertically integrated, well organized, and able to negotiate cohesively as a cartel, the Seven Sisters were initially able to exert considerable power over Third World oil producers. However, in recent decades, the dominance of the Seven Sisters and their successor companies has been challenged by the following trends:
As of 2017, the surviving companies from the Seven Sisters are BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell, which form four members of the "supermajors" group.