Reddit user sverdrupian has posted an amazing, 73-year-old map showing what the world looked like from the view of Standard Oil.
By 1940, the Standard Oil trust created by John D. Rockefeller had been long broken up into "baby standards." The largest one - and the biggest producer in the world - remained registered in New Jersey but was headquartered at the Standard Oil Building in Manhattan.
The map is distorted to emphasize important areas.
There are a bunch of neat things going on:
- Illinois was producing more than Oklahoma.
- Standard has a huge presence in Venezuela (considered as "important" as Texas in the description).
- European refineries have been cut off as a result of the war.
- With the exception of a field in Kirkuk, Iraq, the Middle East is nowhere on the radar.
- There also appear to be no flows coming up through the Suez Canal.
- Instead, Standard's largest field in the "East" is in Indonesia.
Check it out:
