British Petroleum

British Petroleum is one of the biggest companies in Britain and one of the world s largest oil and petrochemicals groups. At the beginning of its history it was known as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. 

Meanwhile, the costs mounted, stretching D Arcy s resources to the point where he sought outside financial assistance. This came in 1905 from the Burmah Oil Company, which provided new funds for his venture. 

More exploration in Persia followed without success until eventually, in May of 1908, Reynolds and his associates struck oil in commercial quantities at Masjid-i-Suleiman in southwest Persia. It was the first commercial oil discovery in the Middle East. This signaled the emergence of that region as an oil producing area. 

After the discovery had been made, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company was formed in 1909 to develop the oilfield and exploit the concession. At the time of Anglo-Persian s formation, 97% of its ordinary shares was owned by the Burmah Oil Company. The rest were owned by Lord Strathcona, the company s first chairman. 

Although D Arcy was appointed a director and remained on the board until his death in 1917, he was not to play a major part in the new company s business. His role as the initial risk-taking investor was past and the daunting task of devel- 

More recently, British Petroleum (BP)37 39 produced two group III stocks, a 4 cSt BP HC-4 and a heavier HC-6 from the fractionator bottoms of their fuels hydrocracker at BP s Lavera, France, refinery. The total bottoms are solvent extracted to stabilize the final products, fractionated, and finally solvent dewaxed. The hydrocracker is operated in a severe mode (relative to lube hydrocracking) at a once-through conversion of 90% (in comparison, lube hydrocrackers may operate at conversions of only about 20%, and perhaps less with a very good quality feed). Like other hydrocracker-sourced group HI products, their compositions are virtually independent of feed source due to the extent of the molecular reorganization that occurs and the molecular structures that are required for those Vis. The properties of the HC-4 are compared in Table 7.26 with those of some competitive group I, II, and IV base stocks. It can be seen that the HC-4 closely resembles the more 

Physical Properties of Base Oils 80N Severely Hydrotreated, 100N Solvent Refined, HC-4 and PAO 4 Typical Properties 

Source G. R. Dobson, N. R Wilkinson, and N. C. Yates, Hydrocracked Base Oils—An Important Class of Synthetics, Proceedings of the 13th World Petroleum Congress 163-169 (1991). With permission. 

FIGURE 7.19 Comparison of average carbon molecular structures of BP HC-4 molecule (shaded circles) and decene trimer (open circles). 

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British Petroleum Corporation bright stock (heavy lubricating stock)... 

Designed by the staff of the Sunbury Re earch. Station of the British Petroleum Company, and marketed by Griffin George Ltd. 

It has been known since the early 1950s that butadiene reacts with CO to form aldehydes and ketones that could be treated further to give adipic acid (131). Processes for producing adipic acid from butadiene and carbon monoxide [630-08-0] have been explored since around 1970 by a number of companies, especially ARCO, Asahi, BASF, British Petroleum, Du Pont, Monsanto, and Shell. BASF has developed a process sufficiendy advanced to consider commercialization (132). There are two main variations, one a carboalkoxylation and the other a hydrocarboxylation. These differ in whether an alcohol, such as methanol [67-56-1is used to produce intermediate pentenoates (133), or water is used for the production of intermediate pentenoic acids (134). The former is a two-step process which uses high pressure, >31 MPa (306 atm), and moderate temperatures (100—150°C) (132—135). Butadiene,... 

Large-scale SCP production processes for growing yeasts of the genus Candida from hydrocarbon substrates were developed by British Petroleum Co., Ltd. and Kanegafuchi Chemical Industry, Ltd. of Japan (57). However, the 100,000-t/yr capacity plants based on these processes, and constmcted in Sardinia and Italy, were abandoned because of regulatory agency questions regarding residual hydrocarbon contents of the products (2,3). 

Data from the World Energy Council. Values in parentheses are from British Petroleum. ... 

HF-A DuraChem Houghton Mobil Quaker Sun Texaco Unocal Aral British Petroleum Century Exxon, Houghton Mobil Shell... 

HF-C Citgo DuraChem Houghton Mobil Nalco Union Carbide Unocal British Petroleum Houghton Mobil Union Carbide... 

HF-D Akzo Chevron FMC Houghton Mobil Monsanto Quaker British Petroleum Fina Houghton Mobil Monsanto... 

British Petroleum Hull, England alkah/hquid phase 6... 

Survey of the patent Hterature reveals companies with processes for 1,4-butanediol from maleic anhydride include BASF (94), British Petroleum (95,96), Davy McKee (93,97), Hoechst (98), Huels (99), and Tonen (100,101). Processes for the production of y-butyrolactone have been described for operation in both the gas (102—104) and Hquid (105—108) phases. In the gas phase, direct hydrogenation of maleic anhydride in hydrogen at 245°C and 1.03 MPa gives an 88% yield of y-butyrolactone (104). Du Pont has developed a process for the production of tetrahydrofuran back-integrated to a butane feedstock (109). Slurry reactor catalysts containing palladium and rhenium are used to hydrogenate aqueous maleic acid to tetrahydrofuran (110,111). 

BP Statistical Review of World Energy, British Petroleum Ltd., London, June 1993. 

Manufacturing plants in the United States are beheved to use solely indirect propylene hydration. Several European companies, eg, British Petroleum, Shell, and Deutsche Texaco, also employ this older technology in plants in Europe and Japan (67). 

U.S. producers of benzene from petroleum and their approximate production capacities are shown in Table 5. These figures are inexact because the size of the market and instabiUty of benzene prices causes frequent changes in capacity. Dow Chemical, with total armual benzene capacity of 8.3 x 10 t (250 million gallons) is the largest producer in the United States. Other companies with total domestic capacity of over 3.3 x 10 t (100 million gallons) per year are Amoco Corp., Lyondell, British Petroleum America, Chevron, Exxon Chemical, Occidental Petroleum, Shell Oil, and Mobil. These companies account for approximately 60% of total U.S. benzene capacity (65). 

A completely new approach for BTX production has emerged in recent years. It converts to paraffins into aromatics using a modified ZSM-5 zeoHte catalyst which contains gallium (19). An example of this approach, the Cyclar process, has been in commercial operation by British Petroleum at Grangemouth, Scotiand since August 1990 (20). It uses C —feed and employs UOP s CCR technology to compensate for rapid catalyst coking. 

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