Chicago Auto Show Photo: British Petroleum Logo Sign

BP (British Petroleum)

BP p.l.c. is a British multinational oil and gas company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the third-largest energy company and fourth-largest company in the world measured by 2011 revenues and is one of the six oil and gas "supermajors". It is vertically integrated and operates in all areas of the oil and gas industry, including exploration and production, refining, distribution and marketing, petrochemicals, power generation and trading. It also has renewable energy activities in biofuels and wind power.

BP has operations in over 80 countries, produces around 3.4 million barrels of oil equivalent per day and has around 21,800 service stations worldwide. Its largest division is BP America, which is the second-largest producer of oil and gas in the United States. BP owns 50% of TNK-BP, which is the third-largest oil company in Russia measured by both reserves and crude oil production. As of December 2011, BP had total proven commercial reserves of 17.75 billion barrels of oil equivalent. BP has a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. It had a market capitalisation of £81.4 billion as of 6 July 2012, the fourth-largest of any company listed on the London Stock Exchange. It has a secondary listing on the New York Stock Exchange.

BP's origins date back to the founding of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company in 1909, established as a subsidiary of Burmah Oil Company to exploit oil discoveries in Iran. In 1935, it became the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and in 1954 British Petroleum. In 1959, the company expanded beyond the Middle East to Alaska and in 1965 it was the first company to strike oil in the North Sea. British Petroleum acquired majority control of Standard Oil of Ohio in 1978. Formerly majority state-owned, the British government privatised the company in stages between 1979 and 1987. British Petroleum merged with Amoco in 1998 and acquired ARCO and Burmah Castrol in 2000.

(Source: Wikipedia.org)

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