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BP Investing

BP Ticker Symbol: BP plc

British Petroleum

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BP Company Info

BP (BP PLC) headquartered in London, is one of six supermajors in the oil industry. Financier William Knox D’Arcy is considered the founding fathers of BP, providing the funding for early drilling attempts, and was named Chairman of the Board at the Anglo-Persian Oil Company in 1912. BP is the outgrowth of the APOC and AIOC (Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, 1935), taking the name British Petroleum Company in 1954.

BP’s scope of operations are broken down between its exploration/production (oil and natural gas exploration, development, upstream production, transportation, and processing segment) and its refining/marketing business (supply, trading, refining, marketing, and transportation).

BP’s retail brands include BP Shop, BP Express, BP Connect, BP Travel Centre, BP Shop, BP 2go, ARCO, and ampm. There are roughly 24,100 BP service stations around the world.

Following the privatization of BP in the 1980's, the 1990's saw the acquisition of Amoco, ARCO, and Burmah-Castrol. Currently, BP is the third largest of the supermajors following Exxon and Royal Dutch Shell.

After the Amoco merger, BP adopted the slogan “Beyond Petroleum”, transitioning its ad campaign to focus on highlighting its modest investment in alternative energy solutions. BP formed its Alternative Energy division, responsible for developing low-carbon energy solutions like solar, wind, natural gas, and hydrogen power.

BP has 17.8 billion barrels in proven reserves of oil and gas equivalents, and produces about 2.4 million barrels of oil and NGL’s per day, along with 8.1 billion cubic feet of natural gas. BP has exploration activities in 29 countries and actively produces in 22. BP’s market capitalization as of January 2009 is $136.27 billion, paying out a dividend of $0.84/share per ADS. BP employees roughly 97,600 workers as of December 2007.

Officers include Anthony B. Hayward as Group Chief Executive, Carl-Henric Svanberg as Chairman, Robert Dudley as Managing Director, and Byron Grote as Chief Financial Officer.

BP Competitors:

Tier 1 BP Competitors - Exxon Mobil (XOM), Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A), british petroleum (CVX), Conoco Philips (COP), Total S.A. (TOT)
Tier 2 BP Competitors - BG Group (BRGYY), Repsol YPF (REP), Petron-Canada (PCZ), Marathon Oil (MRO)