The story
Founded by Weetman Pearson, 1st Viscount Cowdray in 1908.1
Sir Weetman Pearson, Bart. (Viscount Cowdray from 1910) founded the company in 1909 to develop his investments in the Mexican oil fields.
Pearson's interests in Mexico had begun in 1889 when he won a contract from the government of Porfirio Díaz for his civil engineering company, S. Pearson and Sons Ltd, to build the Gran Canal in Mexico City. This was followed by contracts in 1895 to build a harbour at Veracruz and in 1896 to build the Tehuantepec Railway. Pearson diversified into mining, landholding, transport and electrical utilities around Veracruz. He and the engineer F.S. Pearson (no relation) founded the Mexico Power and Light Company, which provided Mexico City's first public electricity supply. Pearson's businesses and government contracts put him in a favourable position with members of the Díaz dictatorship.
Oil production in Mexico was begun in 1901 by a US oil investor, Henry Clay Pierce. He was quickly followed by a rival, Edward L. Doheny, in the same year. Pearson's land surveys in the vicinities of Pedregal and San Cristóbal for the route of the Tehuantepec Railway had reported oil seepage from the ground, so in April 1901 he ordered his manager in Mexico to secure prospecting options on "...all land for miles around". Pearson built a refinery, pipelines and port facilities to handle the oil in 1905–06, but his company didn't make a major oil strike until 1908. In the same year one of Pearson's oil strikes caught fire and burned out of control for eight weeks, destroying the entire oil field.
In 1909 Pearson founded the Compañía Mexicana de Petróleo El Aguila SA ("Mexican Eagle Oil Company") in Mexico to take over S. Pearson and Sons' oil interests. This followed Pearson's creation of Whitehall Securities Corporation Ltd. in the UK in 1908 to manage all of S. Pearson and Sons' investments outside the oil industry. Pearson's prospecting continued without success until 27 December 1910, when a well on the Gulf of Mexico coast between Veracruz and Tampico struck oil that flowed at a rate of 100,000 barrels per day. This single well turned the fortunes of Pearson's oil business. Within a few years he was one of Mexico's two major oil magnates, the other being Doheny. Other oil companies from the USA and Europe had entered the Mexican oil industry but Doheny and Pearson's companies remained pre-eminent until after the First World War.
In 1911 the Mexican Revolution overthrew the Díaz dictatorship that had favoured Pearson, ending the civil engineering contracts for which he had first become involved in Mexico. However, Pearson had exclusive rights to prospect for oil in several Mexican states and by 1914 the company 1,500,000 acres (6,100 km2) of prospecting rights, 175 miles (282 kilometres) of pipeline, two refineries (the second being newly built at Tampico) and storage for seven million barrels of oil.
By June 1913 Mexican Eagle was the largest company in the Pearson group, with net assets valued at £6.8 million. However, in December 1918 Pearson claimed in a letter to the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, that Mexican Eagle was worth £8 million. Mexican Eagle was the largest contributor to the Pearson group's valuation in 1913 of £17 million, which made it the seventh largest business in the UK and among the 30 largest businesses in the World. By 1919 the Pearson group was worth £29.6 million, of which in June of that year Mexican Eagle made up £13.4 million. To what extent this represents a growth in value must be considered against the degree of inflation that took place in the First World War. However, in 1919 the Pearson group's share value was £79.1 million, of which Mexican Eagle made up £62.6 million. This made Mexican Eagle roughly the equal of Burmah Oil and far bigger than the Anglo-Persian Oil Company or Shell Transport and Trading.
From Wikipedia’s article on Mexican Eagle Petroleum Company, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3