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Analysis of British Petroleum Essay

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Analysis of British Petroleum

British Petroleum Company PLC

Public Company

Incorporated: 19909 as Anglo-Persian Oil Company

Employees: 118,050

Sales: £41.71 billion (US$80.51 billion)

Stock Exchanges: London, New York, Toronto, Tokyo, Paris, Zurich, Amsterdam, Frankfurt

Company History

British Petroleum (BP) is one of the worlds leading oil companies, and one of the United Kingdoms largest corporations. The company, which was the pioneer of the Middle Eastern oil industry, having discovered oil in Iran before World War I, is now engaged in all aspects of oil exploration, production, refining, transportation, and marketing. It has significant interest in chemicals
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Later renamed as British Petroleum, the company's name was shortened to BP to reflect a continuing global expansion. Over the years, BP made many important discoveries, including fields in the North Sea near Scotland and at Prudhoe Bayin Alaska.

BP LogoAmoco

Amoco began its life as a part of John D. Rockefeller's powerful Standard Oil Trust. Incorporated in 1889 as the Standard Oil Company (Indiana), the company's first challenge was to build a refinery in Whiting, Indiana, specially designed to handle high-sulphur crude oil from a field near Lima, Ohio.

In 1912, a year after dissolution of the Rockefeller Trust, company scientist William Burton and his colleague, Robert Humphreys, received a patent for the thermal cracking process that doubled the yield of gasoline from a barrel of crude oil, while also boosting its octane rating. Headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, Standard Oil of Indiana remained the company's name until April of 1985 when it became Amoco, reflecting a growing international presence.

Arco

The oldest of the four companies, ARCO was founded in Philadelphia in 1866 as the Atlantic Petroleum Storage Company. At the time, Atlantic's business was simply to store and ship crude and refined oils. In 1870 the company built a refinery that could process 3,000 barrels a day, a record for that time. Only four
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