As the BP Group subsidiary with the longest lineage, the shipping arm traces its roots back to the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) formed in 1908 to develop the huge oil finds made in what was then Persia, now Iran.
On the eve of the First World War, with only one cargoship, the SS Ferrara, to its name, APOC chairman Charles Greenway enlisted the help of Britain’s First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, to secure oil supply for the Royal Navy, and in 1915 the British Tanker Company (BTC) was born.
In
