BP p.l.c. is a British multinational oil and gas company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the third-largest energy company andfourth-largest company in the world measured by 2011 revenues and is one of the six oil and gas "supermajors". It is vertically integrated and operates 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 activities inbiofuels and wind power.BP has operations in over 80 countries, produces around 3.4 million barrels of oil equivalentper day and has around 21,800 service stations worldwide.Its largest division is BP America, which is the second-largest producer of oil and gas in the United States.BP owns 50% of TNK-BP, which is the third-largest oil company in Russia measured by both reserves and crude oil production. As of December 2011, BP had total proven commercial reserves of 17.75 billion barrels of oil equivalent.BP has a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. It had a market capitalisation of £81.4 billion as of 6 July 2012, the fourth-largest of any company listed on the London Stock Exchange.It has a secondary listing on the New York Stock Exchange.BP's origins date back to the founding of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company in 1909, established as a subsidiary of Burmah Oil Company to exploit oil discoveries in Iran. In 1935, it became the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and in 1954 British Petroleum. In 1959, the company expanded beyond the Middle East to Alaska and in 1965 it was the first company to strike oil in the North Sea. British Petroleum acquired majority control of Standard Oil of Ohio in 1978. Formerly majority state-owned, the British government privatised the company in stages between 1979 and 1987. British Petroleum merged with Amoco in 1998 and acquired ARCO and Burmah Castrol in 2000.BP has been involved in a number of major environmental and safety incidents, including the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. In 1997 it became the first major oil company to publicly acknowledge the need to take steps against climate change, and established a target to reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases.Between 2005 and 2010, BP invested about $5 billion in its renewable energy business, mainly in biofuel and wind power projects. In 2011, BP planned to invest $1 billion in renewables, roughly the same amount it invested in 2010.In 2011, BP announced a plan to construct a biofuel refinery in the Southeastern US. In 2010, it took a full control of Vercipia Biofuels, a cellulosic ethanol producer originally established as a joint venture with Verenium Corporation. In Brazil, BP holds a 50% stake inTropical BioEnergia and plans to operate two ethanol refineries. In the US BP has more than 1,200 megawatts (MW) of wind-powered electricity capacity and in July 2010 it began construction of the 250 MW Cedar Creek II Wind Farm in Colorado.BP's former subsidiary BP Solar was a producer of solar panels since its purchase of Lucas Energy Systems in 1980 and Solarex (as part of its acquisition of Amoco) in 2000. Through a series of acquisitions in the solar power industry BP Solar became the third largest producer of solar panels in the world. BP Solar had a 20% world market share in photovoltaic panels in 2004 when it had a capacity to produce 90 MW/year of panels. Due to competition from China, BP closed its US plants in Frederick, Maryland as part of a transition to manufacturing in China.In December 2011, BP Solar was closed and BP withdrew from the solar power industry, saying it was no longer profitable.
Net income $ 25.70 billion (2011)
Total assets $ 290.92 billion (2011)