Did you know that Shell began life as an antiques dealer?
The surprising history of the fossil fuel giant
Today, Shell is an oil and gas company, involved in every stage of the process of generating energy from fossil fuels — exploration, extraction, production, refining, transporting, distribution, marketing, generation, and trading. The 2019 Forbes Global 2000 listed Shell as the largest energy company in the world, and the largest overall company outside China and the United States.
It’s a major player in the oil and gas industry. But it wasn’t always.
During the 1800s Marcus Samuel owned a company which sold antiques in London. In 1833, he decided it was time to expand the business. At the time, oriental seashells were popular within the interior design industry, reflecting the era of colonialism and the British Empire. So, he began to import shells from the Far East to sell them to his customers in London. It was at this point which the company effectively became an import-export company, sowing the seed for it to become the oil giant it is today.
When Marcus Samuel died in 1870, his sons Marcus Samuel and Samuel Samuel inherited the family company. The brothers wanted to continue growing the business, building on the importing of goods into the UK. They expanded to other commodities, importing rice, silk, china and copperware and exporting in return British machinery, textiles, and tools to the newly industrialising Far East — especially Japan.
During the late 1880s and early 1890s the potential of the oil trade began to be realised. Commercially successful internal combustion engines had begun to be invented in the 1850s and 60s, and 1886 saw the first Mercedes brought to market. This meant that, suddenly, there was a growing demand for gasoline to power motor vehicles.
The key problem in oil trade at the time was shipping. Oil was carried in barrels, which took up a substantial amount of space on ships, and also ran the risk of leaking. Others were working on this problem, such as the wealthy Rothschilds family who had invested in railway lines and tunnels in Russia to overcome the transport issues with getting oil to the Black Sea to be exported overseas.
The Samuel brothers wanted in.
They commissioned a fleet of steamers which could carry oil in bulk, using the Suez Canal for the first time — which is now a vital passage for oil tankers. They also set up oil storage facilities at ports in the Far East.
Being able to transport oil in bulk was huge, vastly increasing the amount of oil which could be shipped overseas and traded. By 1896 their oil trading was bringing in more revenue than every other aspect of the business put together. In 1897 Shell Transport and Trading was formed. The name and the, now infamous, logo gave a nod to the history of the company. The logo is a pecten, or scallop shell — one of the most popular types of seashell for collectors.
So there you have it, the story of Shell’s origin as an antiques company, and the explanation of why their logo is a scallop shell. Did you know this was how the oil and gas company began its days?
