Early History

ExxonMobil's history in Singapore dates back to 1893 with the set-up of the Vacuum Oil Company at Robinson Quay, which sold mainly kerosene and lubricants under the Mobiloil brand name.

One of the company's earliest products was the Mei Foo kerosene lamp, introduced in 1906 and which turned out to be very popular with early immigrants.

Vacuum Oil was to become a subsidiary of Standard Oil, which set up a branch office at Union Building in Collyer Quay in 1916.  This was followed two years later with the building of a bunker storage terminal on the island of Pulau Sebarok.

With automobiles becoming more popular, the Flying Red Horse or Pegasus logo began to make its first appearances on the streets of Singapore, notably on signboards of shops selling lubricants.

Vacuum Oil merged with the Standard Oil Company of New York (Socony) in 1931 and became the Standard-Vacuum Oil Company, or Stanvac for short.

Postwar History

Stanvac's operations ceased after the Japanese invasion in 1942 but resumed in 1945 following the end of World War II. It expanded into the aviation supply business in 1948, and started to retail petrol through service stations in 1949.

By 1958, it had more than 200 employees and moved into Shaw House at Orchard Road. In 1961, it introduced bottled cooking gas under the name Stangas which sold 2,000 cylinders during the first year.

But by 1962, the partners in Stanvac decided to split up, and all company assets in Singapore and Malaysia were transferred to Standard Oil of New Jersey, better known as Esso. The Pegasus logo was replaced overnight by the Esso oval; and Stangas became Essogas, a brand name that remains to this day.

Meanwhile, Stanvac's other former partners regrouped to form Mobil Oil Malaysia Sdn Bhd to re-enter the Singapore and Malaysian markets. By 1964, it had set up the first service station in Singapore carrying the Mobil name at Pasir Panjang.  A year later, the Mobil network had expanded to 14 stations.

In 1963, Mobil also made the decision to go into refining. This was realized three years later when the first refinery in Singapore with a capacity of 18,000 barrels per day came onstream at what is today Pioneer Road in Jurong. The refining capacity was stepped up 10-fold to 180,000 bpd by the late 1970s. The nameplate capacity stands today at 300,000 bpd.

In the late sixties, Esso also decided to enter the refining business. Its 90,000 barrel-per-day refinery came onstream on Pulau Ayer Chawan, in 1970. Located on what is today Jurong Island, the facility has a current nameplate capacity of 280,000 barrels per day.

But even as they helped Singapore to leapfrog into the position of the third largest refining centre in the world, after Houston and Rotterdam in the early 1970s, both companies did not stop at refining activities.

From 1980s to Today

New investments were made in the eighties and nineties to increase the slate of refinery products as both Mobil and Esso continued to upgrade their refining capacities as well as add more downstream petrochemicals and lubricant facilities.

By 1993, Mobil had ploughed in a total of S$2.4 billion. These included the building of a $200 million hydrocracker as well as a $1.1 billion catalytic reformer and aromatics unit.

That same year, Exxon Chemical also announced it would build a similar $1 billion aromatics complex, as well as a $380 million hydroprocessing plant at Pulau Ayer Chawan.

In 1997, both Esso and Mobil announced that they would build new crackers on their respective sites, but these plans were soon overtaken by a new development the following year --- the announcement of the proposed merger of Exxon Corporation and Mobil Corporation.

With both companies owning complementary global assets and technology, it was decided instead that a single new state-of-the-art $2 billion petrochemical plant would be built on what is now Jurong Island --- one which would be fully integrated with existing refining and chemical operations at Pulau Ayer Chawan and Pioneer Road.

The Singapore Chemical Plant (SCP) has since played a key role in supporting ExxonMobil's global manufacturing and supply network, supplying to more than 15 major markets.

With this investment, ExxonMobil is now the biggest single foreign investor in Singapore, having invested more than $6.5 billion here since the early 1960s.

ExxonMobil now operates the largest petrol station network in Singapore with more than 70 stations.

Learn about the key dates of ExxonMobil's history in Singapore.