Seven Sisters (oil Companies)

Seven Sisters (oil Companies)

The "Seven Sisters" was a term coined in the 1950s by businessman Enrico Mattei, then-head of the Italian state oil company Eni, to describe the seven oil companies which formed the "Consortium for Iran" cartel and dominated the global petroleum industry from the mid-1940s to the 1970s. The group comprised Anglo-Persian Oil Company (now BP); Gulf Oil, Standard Oil of California (SoCal) and Texaco (now Chevron); Royal Dutch Shell; and Standard Oil of New Jersey (Esso) and Standard Oil Company of New York (Socony) (now ExxonMobil).

Prior to the oil crisis of 1973, the members of the Seven Sisters controlled around 85% of the world's petroleum reserves, but in recent decades the dominance of the companies and their successors has declined as a result of the increasing influence of the OPEC cartel and state-owned oil companies in emerging-market economies.