The History of British PetroleumAround the turn of the twentieth century, oil began to be widely used by the world’s navies and it became a policy axiom that British with the largest navy in the world should be in position to exert political influence in territories where oil was known, or equally important, thought likely, to exist.
Anglo Persian Oil was formed in 1909 by English adventurer William D’Arcy and Burmah oil, and was the first company to strike oil in the Middle East.
The British government took a 51 percent majority share in 1914, just before the outbreak of the First World War.
Concession hunting in the Ottoman empire had proceeded apace between 1900 and 1914 with the creation of the (Anglo-Dutch-German) Turkish Petroleum Company (TPC) in 1912.
In 1913 Anglo-Persian and the TPC merged, which meant that British government also came to acquire a controlling interest in the TPC.
Anglo-Persian took the name British Petroleum in 1954.
In 1997, British Petroleum was the third largest petroleum and petrochemicals globally, and in Europe was quoted as the fifth largest company by turnover.
In the United States, Amoco emerged from Standard Oil trust, organized by John D. Rockefeller 1882.
The English company merged with Amoco in 1998, forming BP Amoco, creating a new oil giant that agreed the next year to buy US based Atlantic Richfield.
BP Amoco then known as BP since 2000. In 2001 BP’s main activities continued to be exploration and production of crude oil and natural gas; refining, marketing, supply and transportation and manufacturing and marketing of petrochemicals.
The History of British Petroleum
