Company Overview

BP’s roots trace back to John D. Rockefeller, who was a little known businessman when he opened the Standard Oil Company in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1870. Standard Oil evolved into what is known today as the world energy giant BP—and Rockefeller became the world’s first billionaire.

The merger of British Petroleum Co. and Amoco Corp. officially formed BP in 1998. BP explores for, produces, markets, and distributes petroleum products worldwide. The company expanded in 2000 by swallowing up Arco, Burmah Castrol, and Veba Oel. In the process of re-branding itself as an energy company, BP dropped "petroleum" from its moniker and adopted a yellow, green, and white Mandela-like logo, known as a helios (named after the sun god of ancient Greece). An integral step in its transition to a more environmentally friendly organization, BP then began rolling out solar-powered gas stations across the United States in 1998, completing its goal of 200 stations by 2000. The company has also created an Alternative Energy unit with an initial investment of $1.5 billion to develop green energy sources, and plans to invest $8 billion by 2015.

Both 2008 and 2009 have been busy years for BP. In 2008, BP signed a deal with Enbridge to pipe oil sands crude from Canada to the Texas Gulf Coast. The same year, BP and Husky Energy teamed up to create an integrated North American oil sands business through two joint ventures: BP-Husky Refinery LLC, operated by BP, and the Sunrise Oil Sands Partnership (SOSP), operated by Husky. BP also acquired 90,000 acres of natural gas assets in Oklahoma’s Arkoma Basin Woodford Shale from Chesapeake Energy in 2008. It also purchased a stake in Chesapeake Energy’s Fayetteville Shale assets in Arkansas.

In 2009, BP announced the discovery of a major oil field in the Gulf of Mexico. The oil field contains 3 billion barrels of oil, which will boast production 50 percent to 600,000 barrels per day.