J. Howard Pew

Who was J. Howard Pew?

John Howard Pew was an American philanthropist and president of Sunoco.

J. Howard Pew was born in Bradford, Pennsylvania in 1882 and raised as a devout Presbyterian. In 1886 Pew’s father, Joseph Newton Pew, Sr. started an oil business in Pennsylvania, expanding to Texas when oil was discovered near Beaumont in 1901. This company became known as the Sun Oil Company. J. Howard Pew attended Shady Side Academy, Grove City College, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology and then worked as a refinery engineer for one of his father's companies. In 1912 with his brother Joseph N. Pew, Jr., J. Howard Pew took over management of the Sun Oil Company improving the company's refining, marketing and distribution systems, and buying or developing energy production operations. In 1934, he purchased and reorganized the Chilton Company, a publisher of several national magazines.

With Pew’s support, in 1962 Sun Oil's majority-owned subsidiary, Great Canadian Oil Sands, filed an application for a commercial oilsands project in Canada – the first ever constructed. In 1967, Pew told his audience at opening ceremonies for the Great Canadian Oil Sands plant that “No nation can long be secure in this atomic age unless it be amply supplied with petroleum... It is the considered opinion of our group that if the North American continent is to produce the oil to meet its requirements in the years ahead, oil from the Athabasca area must of necessity play an important role.” Today, GCOS is known as the Suncor oilsands plant.