Abstract
In August 1981 Conoco became a wholly-owned subsidiary of E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company. Du Pont, with sales of $35.4 bn and net income of $1.1 bn,1 was listed in 1983 as the seventh largest US industrial corporation and the ninth largest industrial corporation in the world. Conoco’s sales (petroleum and coal) in 1983 were $20.1 bn with an after-tax operating income of $621 m.2 Had Conoco not been bought by Du Pont, it would have been the thirteenth largest industrial corporation in the USA and the eighteenth largest in the world.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Fortune, 30 April 1984, p. 276, and 20 August 1984, p. 201.
Du Pont’s Annual Report, 1984, p. 22.
The Times (London), 19 October 1983, p. 15.
Conoco 75, ‘A Special Insert: Conoco’s First 100 Years’, (Stamford, Connecticut: Conoco, 1975) vol. 6, no. 2, especially pp. 15–19.
Jarvis B. Cecil, ‘Continental Oil Company Long-Range Planning’ in George A. Steiner (ed.) Managerial Long-Rang Planning (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963);
Peter Lorange and Richard F. Vancil, Strategic Planning Systems (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1977).
Cecil, ‘Continental Oil Company’.
McLean was the senior author of the seminal study, The Growth of International Oil Companies, by John G. McLean and Robert W. Haigh (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1954). Both authors ended up in the oil industry. Haigh joined SOHIO in 1961 as vice-president of Corporate Planning and Development.
Lorange and Vancil, Strategic Planning Systems, p. 120.
Ibid. p. 119.
Ibid, p. 121.
Company records and private communication to the author, Spring 1983.
Between 1980 and 1983, the author was a member of the Advisory Council, Energy Policy Studies Center, University of Virginia. Conoco was a Sponsor of the Center, and the author had contacts with Samuel Schwartz, Aivars Krasts, and other managers and directors in C & P. Interviews with several Conoco executives and managers in Wilmington in September 1984 and August 1985. Extensive correspondence between Conoco and the author between January 1983 and August 1985.
Wall Street Journal, 11 April 1985.
Letter dated 15 May 1984 from Conoco’s manager of Natural Gas Sales, Gene Lamb, to the US Department of Energy.
Testimony of Walter Zabriskie on the Utah Wilderness Act of 1984, 13 March 1984, and letter sent to all US Senators and Representatives by Max G. Pitcher, vice-president, North American Exploration (Conoco) 23 July 1984.
Interview with C & P managers in Wilmington, September 1984.
Bruce Herzog, ‘Conoco’s Long Range Plan’, C & TSD Technology Review Meeting, 16 May 1984, internal document, p. 2.
Conoco Internal Document.
Conoco Internal Document.
Ibid.
‘An analysis of Four Energy Taxes’, Inter-office Communication, Wilmington, 15 May 1984.
Herzog, ‘Conoco’s Long Range Plan’, internal document, p. 2.
Bruce Herzog, ‘The Corporate Plan and Capital Budget: Rational Competition for Limited Capital’, Conoco/MOPE Planning Seminar, Moss, Norway, 28–30 August 1980, mimeograph, pp. 5–6.
Interview with Conoco managers in Wilmington in September 1984 and correspondence between Conoco and the author since that date and May 1985.
The intellectual framework for the CFPMs was laid in an article by J. G. McLean, ‘How to Evaluate New Capital Investment’, Harvard Business Review, November–December 1958, pp. 59–69. (McLean was Conoco’s CEO and a former professor at the Harvard Business School.)
T. R. Henkel, ‘Presentation on Performance Measurement to the Conoco Executive Committee’, Wilmington, 26 June 1984, internal document;
Aivars Krasts, ‘Performance Evaluation at Conoco’, Planning Review, November 1981, pp. 30–3;
Aivars Krasts, ‘It’s Time to Break with Tradition’, Public Relations Journal, April 1980, pp. 54–7;
Aivars Krasts and Thomas Henkel, ‘Effect of Inflation on the Calculation and Application of Discounted Cash Flow Rates of Return’, Managerial Planning, November/December 1977, pp. 21–6;
Aivars Krasts, ‘Coping with Inflation in Capital Budgeting and Economic Performance Evaluation’, Managerial Planning, July/August 1982;
Aivars Krasts, ‘The Impact of Inflation Rates on Investment Appraisal, Performance, and Financial Measures’, Corporate Accounting, Fall 1983, pp. 19–24.
Personal interviews with C & P managers, Wilmington, September 1984, and August 1985.
Conoco internal document.
Information on planners came from private communication to the author, 5 January 1984 and correspondence up to May 1985.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1987 Leslie E. Grayson
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Grayson, L.E. (1987). Planning in Conoco. In: Who and How in Planning for Large Companies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-08412-8_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-08412-8_7
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-08414-2
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-08412-8
eBook Packages: Palgrave Business & Management CollectionBusiness and Management (R0)