
Location: London, Greater London, United Kingdom
Founder: William Knox D'Arcy
Founded: April 14th, 1909
Key People:
Helge Lund (Chairman)
Murray Auchincloss (CEO)
Employees: 87,800
More About The Manufacturer:[]
In May 1908 a group of British geologists discovered a large amount of oil at Masjid-i-Suleiman located in the province of Khuzestan. It was the first commercially significant find of oil in the Middle East. William Knox D'Arcy, by contract with Ali-Qoli Khan Bakhtiari, obtained permission to explore for oil for the first time in the Middle East, an event that changed the history of the entire region. The oil discovery led to petrochemical industry development and also the establishment of industries that strongly depended on oil. On 14 April 1909, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) was incorporated as a subsidiary of Burmah Oil Company. Some of the shares were sold to the public. The first chairman and minority shareholder of the company became Lord Strathcona.
After World War I, APOC started marketing its products in Continental Europe and acquired stakes in the local marketing companies in several European countries. Refineries were built in Llandarcy in Wales (the first refinery in the United Kingdom) and Grangemouth in Scotland. It also acquired the controlling stake in the Courchelettes refinery in France and formed with the Government of Australia a partnership named Commonwealth Oil Refineries, which built the Australian's first refinery in Laverton, Victoria. In 1923, Burmah employed Winston Churchill as a paid consultant to lobby the British government to allow APOC to have exclusive rights to Persian oil resources, which were subsequently granted by the Iranian monarchy.
Following World War II, nationalistic sentiments were on the rise in the Middle East; most notably being Iranian nationalism and Arab Nationalism. In Iran, the AIOC and the pro-western Iranian government led by Prime Minister Ali Razmara resisted nationalist calls to revise AIOC's concession terms in Iran's favor. In March 1951, Razmara was assassinated and Mohammed Mossadeq, a nationalist, was elected as the new prime minister by the Majlis of Iran (parliament). In April 1951, the Iranian government nationalized the Iranian oil industry by unanimous vote, and the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) was formed, displacing the AIOC. The AIOC withdrew its management from Iran, and Britain organized an effective worldwide embargo of Iranian oil. The British government, which owned the AIOC, contested the nationalization at the International Court of Justice at The Hague, but its complaint was dismissed.
In 1954, the AIOC became the British Petroleum Company. After the 1953 Iranian coup d'état, Iranian Oil Participants Ltd (IOP), a holding company, was founded in October 1954, in London to bring Iranian oil back to the international market. British Petroleum was a founding member of this company with 40% stake. IOP operated and managed oil facilities in Iran on behalf of NIOC. Similar to the Saudi-Aramco "50/50" agreement of 1950, the consortium agreed to share profits on a 50–50 basis with Iran, "but not to open its books to Iranian auditors or to allow Iranians onto its board of directors."
In 1953, British Petroleum entered the Canadian market through the purchase of a minority stake in Calgary-based Triad Oil Company, and expanded further to Alaska in 1959, resulting discovery of oil at Prudhoe Bay in 1969. In 1956, its subsidiary D'Arcy Exploration Co. (Africa) Ltd. has been granted four oil concessions in Libya. In 1962, Scottish Oils ceased oil-shale operations. In 1965, it was the first company to strike oil in the North Sea. In 1969, BP entered the United States by acquiring the East Coast refining and marketing assets of Sinclair Oil Corporation. The Canadian holding company of British Petroleum was renamed BP Canada in 1969; and in 1971, it acquired 97.8% stake of Supertest Petroleum.
By the 1960s, British Petroleum had developed a reputation for taking on the riskiest ventures. It earned the company massive profits; it also earned them the worst safety record in the industry. In 1967, the giant oil tanker Torrey Canyon foundered off the English coast. Over 32 million US gallons (760,000 bbl; 120,000 m3) of crude oil were spilled into the Atlantic and onto the beaches of Cornwall and Brittany, causing Britain's worst-ever oil spill. The ship was owned by the Bahamas-based Barracuda Tanker Corporation and was flying the flag of Liberia, a well-known flag of convenience, but was being chartered by British Petroleum. The ship was bombed by RAF jet bombers in an effort to break up the ship and burn off the leaking oil, but this failed to destroy the oil slick.
The intensified power struggle between oil companies and host governments in Middle East, along with the oil price shocks that followed the 1973 oil crisis meant British Petroleum lost most of its direct access to crude oil supplies produced in countries that belonged to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and prompted it to diversify its operations beyond the heavily Middle East dependent oil production. In 1976, BP and Shell de-merged its marketing operations in the United Kingdom by dividing Shell-Mex and BP. In 1978, the company acquired a controlling interest in Standard Oil of Ohio (Sohio).
Peter Walters was the company chairman from 1981 to 1990. During his period as chairman, he reduced the company's refining capacity in Europe. In 1982, the downstream assets of BP Canada were sold to Petro Canada. In 1984, Standard Oil of California was renamed to Chevron Corporation; and it bought Gulf Oil—the largest merger in history at that time. To meet anti-trust regulations, Chevron divested many of the Gulf's operating subsidiaries and sold some Gulf stations and a refinery in the eastern United States to British Petroleum and Cumberland Farms in 1985. In 1987, British Petroleum negotiated the acquisition of Britoil and the remaining publicly traded shares of Standard Oil of Ohio. In the same year it was listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange where its share was traded until delisting in 2008.
Walters was replaced by Robert Horton in 1990. Horton carried out a major corporate downsizing exercise, removing various tiers of management at the head office. In 1992, British Petroleum sold off its 57% stake in BP Canada (upstream operations), which was renamed as Talisman Energy. John Browne, who had joined BP in 1966 and rose through the ranks to join the board as managing director in 1991, was appointed group chief executive in 1995.
In 1981, British Petroleum entered into the solar technology sector by acquiring 50% of Lucas Energy Systems, a company which became Lucas BP Solar Systems, and later BP Solar. The company was a manufacturer and installer of photovoltaic solar cells. It became wholly owned by British Petroleum in the mid-1980s.
British Petroleum entered the Russian market in 1990 and opened its first service station in Moscow in 1996. In 1997, it acquired a 10% stake for $571 million in the Russian oil company Sidanco, which later became a part of TNK-BP. Sidanco was run by Russian oligarch Vladimir Potanin who obtained Sidanco through the controversial loans-for-shares privatization scheme. In 2003, BP invested $8 billion into a joint venture with Russian oligarch Mikhail Fridman's TNK.
In 1992, the company entered the Azerbaijani market. In 1994, it signed the production sharing agreement for the Azeri–Chirag–Guneshli oil project and in 1995 for the Shah Deniz gas field development.
At the beginning of the 2000s, BP became the leading partner (and later operator) of the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline project which opened a new oil transportation route from the Caspian region. In 2002, BP acquired the majority of Veba Öl AG, a subsidiary of VEBA AG, and subsequently rebranded its existing stations in Germany to the Aral name. As part of the deal, BP acquired also the Veba Öl's stake in Ruhr Öl's joint venture. Ruhr Öl was dissolved in 2016.
On 1 September 2003, BP and a group of Russian billionaires, known as AAR (Alfa–Access–Renova), announced the creation of a strategic partnership to jointly hold their oil assets in Russia and Ukraine. As a result, TNK-ВР was created.
In 2004, BP's olefins and derivatives business was moved into a separate entity which was sold to Ineos in 2005. In 2007, BP sold its corporate-owned convenience stores, typically known as "BP Connect", to local franchisees and jobbers.
On 23 March 2005, 15 workers were killed and more than 170 injured in the Texas City refinery explosion. To save money, major upgrades to the 1934 refinery had been postponed. Browne pledged to prevent another catastrophe. Three months later, 'Thunder Horse PDQ', BP's giant new production platform in the Gulf of Mexico, nearly sank during a hurricane. In their rush to finish the $1 billion platform, workers had installed a valve backwards, allowing the ballast tanks to flood. Inspections revealed other shoddy work. Repairs costing hundreds of millions would keep Thunder Horse out of commission for three years.
Lord Browne resigned from BP on 1 May 2007. The head of exploration and production Tony Hayward became the new chief executive. In 2009, Hayward shifted emphasis from Lord Browne's focus on alternative energy, announcing that safety would henceforth be the company's "number one priority".
In 2007, BP formed with AB Sugar and DuPont a joint venture Vivergo Fuels which opened a bioethanol plant in Saltend near Hull, United Kingdom in December 2012. Together with DuPont, BP formed a biobutanol joint venture Butamax by acquiring biobutan technology company Biobutanol LLC in 2009.
In 2009, BP obtained a production contract to develop the supergiant Rumaila field with joint venture partner CNPC.
In January 2010, Carl-Henric Svanberg became chairman of BP board of directors.
On 20 April 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, a major industrial accident, happened. Consequently, Bob Dudley replaced Tony Hayward as the company's CEO, serving from October 2010 to February 2020. BP announced a divestment program to sell about $38 billion worth of non-core assets to compensate its liabilities related to the accident. In July 2010, BP sold its natural gas activities in Alberta and British Columbia, Canada, to Apache Corporation. It sold its stake in the Petroperijá and Boquerón fields in Venezuela and in the Lan Tay and Lan Do fields, the Nam Con Son pipeline and terminal, and the Phu My 3 power plant in Vietnam to TNK-BP, forecourts and supply businesses in Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Tanzania and Malawi to Puma Energy, the Wytch Farm onshore oilfield in Dorset and a package of North Sea gas assets to Perenco, natural-gas liquids business in Canada to Plains All American Pipeline LP, natural gas assets in Kansas to Linn Energy, Carson Refinery in Southern California and its ARCO retail network to Tesoro, Sunray and Hemphill gas processing plants in Texas, together with their associated gas gathering system, to Eagle Rock Energy Partners, the Texas City Refinery and associated assets to Marathon Petroleum, the Gulf of Mexico located Marlin, Dorado, King, Horn Mountain, and Holstein fields as also its stake in non-operated Diana Hoover and Ram Powell fields to Plains Exploration & Production, non-operating stake in the Draugen oil field to Norske Shell, and the UK's liquefied petroleum gas distribution business to DCC. In November 2012, the U.S. Government temporarily banned BP from bidding any new federal contracts. The ban was conditionally lifted in March 2014.
In February 2011, BP formed a partnership with Reliance Industries, taking a 30% stake in a new Indian joint-venture for an initial payment of $7.2 billion. In September 2012, BP sold its subsidiary BP Chemicals (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., an operator of the Kuantan purified terephthalic acid (PTA) plant in Malaysia, to Reliance Industries for $230 million. In October 2012, BP sold its stake in TNK-BP to Rosneft for $12.3 billion in cash and 18.5% of Rosneft's stock. The deal was completed on 21 March 2013. In 2012, BP acquired an acreage in the Utica Shale but these developments plans were cancelled in 2014.
In 2011–2015, BP cut down its alternative energy business. The company announced its departure from the solar energy market in December 2011 by closing its solar power business, BP Solar. In 2012, BP shut down the BP Biofuels Highlands project which was developed since 2008 to make cellulosic ethanol from emerging energy crops like switchgrass and from biomass. In 2015, BP decided to exit from other lignocellulosic ethanol businesses. It sold its stake in Vivergo to Associated British Foods. BP and DuPont also mothballed their joint biobutanol pilot plant in Saltend.
In June 2014, BP agreed to a deal worth around $20 billion to supply CNOOC with liquefied natural gas. In 2014, Statoil Fuel & Retail sold its aviation fuel business to BP. To ensure the approval of competition authorities, BP agreed to sell the former Statoil aviation fuel businesses in Copenhagen, Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö airports to World Fuel Services in 2015.
In 2016, BP sold its Decatur, Alabama, plant to Indorama Ventures, of Thailand. At the same year, its Norwegian daughter company BP Norge merged with Det Norske Oljeselskap to form Aker BP.
In 2017, BP announced a planned investment of $200 million to acquire a 43% stake in the solar energy developer Lightsource Renewable Energy, a company that will be renamed Lightsource BP. In March 2017, the company acquired Clean Energy's biomethane business and assets, including its production sites and existing supply contracts. In April 2017, its subsidiary Butamax bought an isobutanol production company Nesika Energy.
In July 2018, the company agreed to purchase BHP's shale assets in Texas and Louisiana for $10.5 billion. Also in 2018, BP bought a 16.5% interest in the Clair field in the UK from ConocoPhillips, increasing its share to 45.1%. BP paid £1.3 billion and gave to ConocoPhillips its 39.2% non-operated stake in the Kuparuk River Oil Field and satellite oil fields in Alaska. BP also acquired Chargemaster, which operated the UK's largest electric vehicle charging network. In December 2018, BP sold its wind assets in Texas.
Helge Lund succeeded Carl-Henric Svanberg on 1 January 2019 as chairman of BP Plc board of directors. In January 2019, BP discovered 1 billion barrels (160×106 m3) oil at its Thunder Horse location in the Gulf of Mexico. The company also announced plans to spend $1.3 billion one-third of its phase of the Atlantis field near New Orleans. BP in iRacing is quite prominent as the fuel supplier for many of its formula cars like the Dallara F3 and the F1 cars.
On 29 June 2020, BP sold its petrochemicals unit to Ineos for $5 billion. The business was focused on aromatics and acetyls. It had interests in 14 plants in Asia, Europe and the U.S., and achieved production of 9.7 million metric tons in 2019. On 30 June 2020, BP sold all its Alaska upstream operations and interests, including interests in Prudhoe Bay Oil Field, to Hilcorp for $5.6 billion. On 14 December 2020, it sold its 49% stake in the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System to Harvest Alaska.
In September 2020, BP formed a partnership with Equinor to develop offshore wind and announced it will acquire 50% non-operating stake in the Empire Wind off New York and Beacon Wind off Massachusetts offshore wind farms. The deal is expected to be completed at the first half of 2021. In December 2020, BP acquired a majority stake in Finite Carbon, the largest forest carbon offsets developer in the United States.
In response to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, BP announced that it would sell its 19.75% stake in Rosneft, although no timeline was announced. At the time of BP's decision, Rosneft's activities accounted for around half of BP's oil and gas reserves and a third of its production. BP's decision came after the British government expressed concern about BP's involvement in Russia. However, BP remained a Rosneft shareholder throughout the whole 2022 year, which caused some criticism from the Ukrainian president's office.
In October 2022, BP announced that it would be acquiring Archaea Energy Inc., a renewable natural gas producer, for $4.1 billion. In December 2022, it was announced BP had completed the acquisition of Archaea Energy Inc. for $3.3 billion. In November 2022, the company announced a large increase in profit for the period from July to September due to the high fuel prices caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
In February 2023, BP reported record annual profits, on a replacement cost basis, for the year 2022. On that basis, 2022 profits were more than double than in 2021, and they were also the biggest profits in the whole 114-year long history of BP.
After 10 years of force majeure, BP, Eni and Sonatrach resumed exploration in their blocks in the Ghadames Basin (A-B) and offshore Block C in August 2023, continuing their contract obligations.
BP increased its dividend by 10% year-on-year in early 2024 and accelerated share buybacks. It has already announced $1.75 billion before reporting first quarter results and intends to announce a $3.5 billion share buyback in the first half of the year.
Murray Auchincloss became CEO in January 2024.
In June 2024, BP announced the acquisition of Bunge Bioenergia from Bunge Global for US$1.4 billion. The purchase will increase BP's ethanol production to 50,000 barrels per day.