Success Story
Sinclair
Becomes Largest Oil Independent in Mid-Continent
 The
year 1916 found Sinclair the mid-continent's largest oil
independent. For himself and partners in various enterprises, he
sold 33,000 barrels of crude oil a day. But his individualistic
temper was irked at the entrenched operators and their price
policies. In one of his most famous snap judgments, Sinclair decided
to fight the giants on their own ground. In one busy week, he
blueprinted a $50 million enterprise to be engaged in every branch
of the petroleum industry: crude oil production, pipelining and
other transport, refining, and worldwide marketing.
In the mid-continent, Cushing Field had spewed millions of barrels
of oil in 1915 onto a market already oversupplied by the prolific
Glenn Pool. The quoted price of $1.20 a barrel for crude was a
fiction; the independents fought for life by sales as low as ten
cents. Hundreds of oil leases and producing properties were for sale
at the lowest prices in a decade, from 10 to 25 percent of their
true value. Harry Sinclair knew the worth of each one; he began to
take options.
 Automotive
Age Begins
The historic era also favored bold enterprise in the petroleum
industry. Europe was at war. Ocean vessels and navies, railroads and
heavy industries, were converting from coal to oil fuel. The U.S.
Navy alone estimated its fuel oil needs at nearly two million
barrels a year, America's railroads at almost half a millions
barrels. There were 193 aviators, presaging the gasoline-powered
invasion of the skies.
Continent-wide expansion was forecast, marked by construction of the
coast-to-coast Lincoln Highway. Most significantly, Henry Ford's
$350 Model T now rolled from a newfangled assembly line, and would
increase the registration of U.S. passenger cars from 2,350,000 to
6,600,000 in a short three years, plus a total of 700,000 trucks,
158,000 farm tractors and 64,000 airplanes.
The era of the gasoline-burning internal combustion engine had
begun, and with it the great expansion of the petroleum industry.
Harry Sinclair could not have timed his new venture any better.
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