British Petroleum has grown over the years to become the company it is today. Below is a chronological history of the company.
May 1901: William Knox DArcy got permission from the Persian Shah of Persia, Iran to begin the exploration of oil in the region. In 1905, through the help of Burham Oil Company, the company was able to make a little progress and discovered several oil fields in the region (BP.com 1).
May 1908: The Company discovered that oil was present in the south-west region of Iran. The oil was in large quantities, and it could even be exported.
14 April 1909: The Company was registered under the name Anglo-Persian Oil Company. 97% of all the shares of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company was owned by Burham Oil Company while the 3% was owned by Lord Strathcona who was the president of the Company (Bamberg 4).
1914: The British Government became the chief stockholder of the company.
1920: The Company expanded and obtained several farms in other countries such as Canada, U.S.A, Africa and Europe
1935: The Company changed its name from Anglo-Persian Oil Company to Anglo-Iranian Oil Company Limited
The 1940s: The Company suffered huge losses because of World War 2. It lost more than half of its total tanks.
1950: Iran decided to nationalize all the assets of the company. However, after three years of negotiations, a consortium was established to start oil mining in Iran again.
1954: The Company changed its name from Anglo-Iranian Oil Company to British Petroleum Company Limited.
1955: The Company became a holding company.
1970: BP decided to merge some of its assets present in the U.S.A with the ones that were owned by Standard Oil Company in Ohio. British Petroleum was handed a controlling interest in the company.
1977: The British Government decided to sell some of its British Petroleum shares to the company.
1981: The Company underwent a significant restructuring
1982: The Company adopted the name British Petroleum Company PLC
The late 1980s: The Company sold all its remaining shares, and it now became a privately owned company.
1986: The nutrition department of BP Company purchased Purina Mills (a U.S.A Company) which was one of the oldest companies in that field.
1987: British Petroleum bought Standard Oil Company for more than eight billion dollars. In this same year, the company also acquired Britoil and expanded its exploration activities in the North Sea.
1998: British Petroleum formed a merger with Amoco. The company (after the merging process) was known as BP Amoco.
2000: Dropped the name Amoco and officially became BP PLC. The name was changed after the company acquired Atlantic Richfield Company (Used to deal with brand gasoline, gas and lubricants)
2003: BP launched the slogan Beyond Petroleum so that it would focus on green and renewable sources of energy. However, after ten years, the company scrapped off most of its solar energy plants.
2010: The Deepwater Horizon incident took place. The rig, which was owned by Transocean but had been leased by British Petroleum, exploded. It resulted in a massive rupture and oil spill where close to more than five million barrels of oil were released into the ocean. The spill was the largest to ever occur in history (Tharoor 1). BP decided to pay fines and penalties to the government of the United States of America as a result of the oil spillage. The fines amounted to close to five billion dollars.
Works Cited
Bamberg, James H. The History of the British Petroleum Company: British Petroleum
and Global Oil, 19501975: The Challenge of Nationalism. 2000. vol. III. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press."BP.com: History of BP Post war". Archived from the original on 3 July 2010. Retrieved
12.12.2017
Tharoor, Ishaan (2 June 2010). "A Brief History of BP". Time. Archived from the original on 10
July 2010. Retrieved 12.12.2017
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