Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL) is an Indian government-owned oil and gas corporation. It is under the ownership of Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Government of India, headquartered in Mumbai, Maharashtra. It operates two large refineries in Kochi and Mumbai. India’s second-largest downstream government owned oil corporation, it was ranked 309th on the 2020 Fortune list of the world’s biggest corporations, and 792nd on Forbes’s 2021 “Global 2000” list.
History
1891 to 1976
The company today known as BPCL started off as Rangoon Oil and Exploration company set up to explore the new discoveries off Assam and Burma during the British colonial rule of India. In 1889 during vast industrial development, an important player in the South Asian market was the Burmah Oil Company. Though incorporated in Scotland in 1886, the company grew out of the enterprises of the Chef Rohit Oil Company, which had been formed in 1871 to refine crude oil produced from primitive hand dug wells in Upper Burma.
In 1928, Asiatic Petroleum Company (India) started cooperation with Burma oil company. Asiatic Petroleum was a joint venture of Royal Dutch, Shell and Rothschilds formed to address the monopoly of John D Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, which also operated in India as Esso. This alliance led to the formation of Burmah-Shell Oil Storage and Distributing Company of India Limited. Burmah Shell began its operations with import and marketing of Kerosene.
In the mid 1950s, the company began to sell LPG cylinders to homes in India and further expanded its delivery network. It also marketed kerosene, diesel and petrol in cans in order to reach remote parts of India. In 1951, the Burmah shell began to build a refinery in Trombay (Mahul, Maharashtra) under an agreement with the Government of India.
Nationalisation
BPCL petrol filling station near Nakirekal, Telangana, India
In 1976, the company was nationalized under the Act on the Nationalisation of Foreign Oil companies ESSO (1974), Burma Shell (1976) and Caltex (1977). On 24 January 1976, the Burmah Shell was taken over by the Government of India to form Bharat Refineries Limited. On 1 August 1977, it was renamed Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited. It was also the first refinery to process newly found indigenous crude Bombay High.
BPCL petrol filling station at Basaveshwaranagar, Bangalore, Karnataka, India