BRITISH PETROLEUM

British Petroleum

British Petroleum

Task1

British Petroleum Objectives

British Petroleum (BP) is more than a collection of assets. It is people working together. Our culture, our leadership style and our management processes all Endeavour to reflect this belief. According to the new vision and mission statement for BP, the top five objectives are:

Establishing and maintaining a motivating and supportive dialogue between leaders and their teams

Help to build confidence and stimulate innovation from everyone who works for BP

Developing first-class leadership at all times; maintaining consistently high standards in recruitment

Continuously developing people's skills at every level and thus enhancing the company's capability and flexibility

Striking a balance in our management processes between local empowerment and wider integration across the Group

Reason To Choose These Objectives And The Criteria Used To Review The Potential Options

The British Petroleum Company plc (BP) is the United Kingdom's largest corporation. The pioneer of the Middle Eastern oil industry, BP discovered oil in Iran before World War I and eventually became involved in all aspects of the oil industry, from exploration to marketing objectives. By the mid-1990s, it was producing over 1.2 million barrels of oil and 1.5 million cubic feet of natural gas every day. "Downstream" operations--oil refining and marketing--contributed the lion's share (over four-fifths) of BP's revenues in the mid-1990s. BP is familiar to most people by virtue of its more than 16,400 service stations around the world, but it also has significant interests in oil exploration (generating 13 percent of revenues) as well as production of chemicals and plastics (about seven percent of sales) (Brierley, 1999, 101).

BP originated in the activities of William Knox D'Arcy, a business objective adventurer who had made a fortune in Australian mining. In 1901 D'Arcy secured a concession from the Grand Vizier of Persia (now known as Iran) to explore for petroleum throughout most of his empire. The search for oil proved extremely costly and difficult, since Persia was devoid of infrastructure and politically unstable. Within a few years D'Arcy was in need of capital. Eventually, after intercession by members of the British Admiralty, the Burmah Oil Company joined D'Arcy in a Concessionary Oil Syndicate in 1905 and supplied further funds in return for operational control. In May 1908 oil was discovered in the southwest of Persia at Masjid-i-Suleiman, the first oil discovery in the Middle East. The following April the Anglo-Persian Oil Company was formed, with the Burmah Oil Company holding most of the shares.

The dominant figure in the early years of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company was Charles Greenway. Greenway began his career in the firm of managing agents who handled the marketing of Burmah Oil's products in India. Invited by Burmah Oil to help in the formation of Anglo-Persian Oil, he became a founding director, was appointed managing director in 1910, and took the position of chairman in 1914. The first few years of the company's existence were extremely difficult, and it survived as an independent entity largely through Greenway's skill. Although Anglo-Persian Oil had located a prolific oil field, it encountered major ...