page_title: BP
section_title: 1954 to 1979
hierarchical_section_title: BP / History / 1954 to 1979
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Citroën HY, Bj. 1967, gesehen in Canet-Plage, Frankreich English: Citroën Type HY, built 1967, seen in Canet-Plage, France
context_page_description: BP plc is a British multinational oil and gas company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is one of the world's seven oil and gas "supermajors", whose performance in 2012, made it the world's sixth-largest oil and gas company, the sixth-largest energy company by market capitalization and the company with the world's 12th-largest revenue. It is a vertically integrated company operating 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 interests in biofuels, wind power, smart grid and solar technology.
  As of 31 December 2018, BP had operations in nearly 80 countries worldwide, produced around 3.7 million barrels per day of oil equivalent, and had total proven reserves of 19.945 billion barrels of oil equivalent. The company has around 18,700 service stations worldwide. Its largest division is BP America in the United States. In Russia, BP owns a 19.75% stake in Rosneft, the world's largest publicly traded oil and gas company by hydrocarbon reserves and production.
context_section_description: 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 was 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.
  In 1967, BP acquired chemical and plastics assets of The Distillers Company which were merged with British Hydrocarbon Chemicals to form BP Chemicals.
  The company's oil assets were nationalised in Libya in 1971, in Kuwait in 1975, and in Nigeria in 1979. In Iraq, IPC ceased its operations after it was nationalised by the Ba'athist Iraqi government in June 1972, although legally Iraq Petroleum Company still remains in existence, and one of its associated companies —Abu Dhabi Petroleum Company (ADPC), formerly Petroleum Development (Trucial Coast) Ltd – also continues with the original shareholding intact.
  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 their 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).
  In Iran, British Petroleum continued to operate until the Islamic Revolution in 1979. The new regime of Ayatollah Khomeini nationalised all of the company's assets in Iran without compensation, bringing to an end its 70-year presence in Iran. As a result, BP lost 40% of its global crude oil supplies.
  In 1970–1980s BP diversified into coal, minerals and nutrition businesses which all were divested later.
caption: A BP truck from 1967
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