British Petroleum (BP) is an Oil and Gas company. It is a vertically integrated company operating in all areas of the Oil and Gas industry, including exploration, production, refining, distribution and marketing. Other than petrochemicals it also works in power generation sector and performs trading. It also has renewable energy interests in biofuels, wind power and solar technology. BP America in the United States is its biggest division. In Russia, BP holds a 19.75% interest in Rosneft, the world’s largest publicly traded Oil and Gas company.
Headquarters: England, United Kingdom
Annual Revenue: 303.73 Billion U.S Dollars
Established in: 1909
Number of Employees: 73,000
History:
- In 1908, British Petroleum was the Middle East’s first economically significant Oil discovery.
- The British government gained a majority interest in the company in 1913 (50 percent).
- After forming a branch called Scottish Oils in 1919, the company became a shale Oil manufacturer.
- In 1923, Burmah hired Winston Churchill as a senior advisor to push for APOC to have exclusive access to Persian Oil resources.
- In 1927, the TPC finally struck Oil in Iraq.
- The Kuwait Oil Company was founded by APOC and Gulf Oil in 1934 as a jointly shared collaboration.
- Iraq Petroleum Company owned 23.75 percent of BP in 1937
- British Petroleum Chemicals joined AIOC and The Distillers Company as a joint venture in 1947.
- From 1954, the British Petroleum Corporation became the AIOC.
- British Petroleum’s reputation for bringing on the most risky ventures has grown in the 1960s.
- In 1967, BP purchased The Distillers Company’s chemical and rubber properties that were integrated into BP Chemicals and British Hydrocarbon Chemicals.
- In 1976, after splitting Petro-Mex and BP, BP and Shell de-merged their commercial activities in the UK.
- BP diversified into coal, minerals, and nutrition businesses in the 1970s–1980s, all of which were later divested.
- BP became a founding member of the Baku – Tbilisi – Ceyhan pipeline project at the beginning of the 2000s, which opened a new Caspian Oil export road.
- BP’s olefins and derivatives company was moved to a separate entity in 2004, which was sold in 2005 to Ineos.
- In 2009, Hayward shifted the focus from Lord Browne’s focus on alternative energy and announced that safety would be the number one priority of the company.
- Carl-Henric Svanberg became Chairman of the Board of Directors of BP in January 2010.
- In 2011, BP formed a partnership with Reliance Industries with a 30% interest in a proposed Indian joint venture for an estimated $7.2 billion transaction.
- BP sold its Decatur, Alabama, plant to Thailand’s Indorama Ventures in 2016.
- In 2018, the firm agreed to buy $10.5 billion in BHP’s shale reserves in Texas and Louisiana.
Operations:
British Petroleum operations are organized into three business segments, Upstream, Downstream, and renewables.
- Upstream:
Technology is the basis of everything it does in the Upstream. Its strengths in exploration, deep water, giant fields and Gas value chains are enabled by leading technology positions in seismic imaging, improved Oil recovery, unconventional and digital technologies in Calgary.
- Downstream:
The activities of BP downstream includes refining, marketing, manufacturing, transport, trading and supplying crude Oil, petrochemicals and petroleum products. Downstream is responsible for the Oil, lubricants and petrochemical businesses of BP and has major operations in Europe, North America and Asia. Its lines of operations are:
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- Refining, technology and engineering
- Petrochemical technology
- Formulated products technology
- Etc.
- Renewable Energy:
British Petroleum has been investing in renewables for many years. It focuses on biofuels, biopower, wind energy and solar energy. It runs a biofuels business in Brazil by using one of the world’s most long-lasting and benefited feedstocks to produce renewable ethanol and power. It also provides renewable power through onshore wind energy in the US, and develops & deploys technology in propelling efficiency. In solar energy, BP meets the growing demand for large-scale solar projects around the globe through Lightsource BP.
Exploration and Production:
BP developed about 3.7 million barrels of Oil equivalent per day of which 2,191 million barrels per day were liquids and 8,659 billion cubic feet per day were Natural Gas, with gross proven reserves of 19,945 million barrels of Oil equivalent of which liquids accounted for 11,456 million barrels of Oil equivalent. BP has a stake in Canada’s three Oil sands projects in addition to conventional Oil exploration and production.
BP products:
BP products include:
- Bio fuels
- Gas and petrol stations
- Motor Oil and lubricants
- Route and journey planner
- Gas and petrol station locator
- Liquefied petroleum Gas &
- Solar energy
Mission and Vision:
BP is known as a healthy, competitively successful, and a company that is a driving force for change. It has a basic belief that it can make a difference in the world. It helps meet the world’s growing heat, light and mobility needs. It aims to do this by providing inexpensive, safe, and environmentally friendly fuel.
Countries of Operation:
BP has operations in 78 countries worldwide. Some of them are:
- Egypt
- Angola
- Brazil
- South China
- India
- Indonesia
- Iraq
- Azerbaijan
- Netherlands
- France
- Germany
- Switzerland,
- Italy
- Austria
- Poland
- Greece &
- Turkey