The origins of supermajor BP can be traced back to May 1901 when William Knox D'Arcy was granted a exploratory oil concession by the Shah of Iran. What followed was a near 80 year rollercoaster ride of espionage, assassinations, overthrown governments and eventually BP being unceremoniously booted out of the country and all of its oil assets confiscated by Ayatollah Khomeini.
The company D’Arcy founded back in the early 1900s was called the Anglo-Persian Oil Company and it struck oil in Iran in 1908, the first commercially viable oil to be found in the Middle East. The company began extracting the oil and eventually changed its name to the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) in 1935.
So far so good, but things soon began to go awry after the Second World War. Unrest was growing in Iran at was deemed to be unfavourable concession terms being given to the AIOC. When Ali Razmara, the pro-western prime minister was assassinated in 1951, the nationalist , Mohammed Mossadeq took over and the oil industry was immediately nationalised.
In direct response to this event, the United States' secret service, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), organized a military coup in early 1953 , overthrew Mossadeq and installed pro-Western general Fazlollah Zahedi in his place. Shortly afterwards the Shah of Iran swiftly established himself as dictator of the country and invited the foreign oil companies back.
The AIOC changed its name to the British Petroleum Company in 1954 and quickly tried to reassume it’s monopoly in Iran, but adverse public opinion meant that BP had to make do with conventional production sharing agreements with the newly formed National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) and other foreign oil firms were invited into the country.
The status quo continued until the Iranian Revolution in 1979.
The King is calling for a halt to exploration, but do you agree?
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very useful article :)