THE OIL INDUSTRY

BP

North Sea Oil

What became oil was lain in what was to become the North Sea in the Late Jurassic and Early Cretacious Periods (150 million to 66 million years ago). In 1969 in commercially viable deposits were discovered between Britain and Norway.

Website: www.nstauthority.co.uk https://nstauthority.co.uk (The North Sea Transition Authority) www.ogauthority.co.uk

The Royal Navy

In 1911 Winston Churchill was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty. He oversaw the service's switch from coal to oil. It had more energy by weight, it was easier to transfer, and it left no residue that had to be dealt with. Therefore, the Middle East acquired a new interest. Oil became of global strategic importance.

Location: (32) Whitehall, SW1A 2DY (blue, brown)

See Also: THE NAVY

Website: www.royalnavy.mod.uk

Shell

Historically, the Anglo-Dutch oil multinational Royal Dutch/Shell Group has had two headquarters, one in The Hague in The Netherlands and the other in London. The latter is that of Shell Transport & Trading. It is located in the Shell Centre.

In 1833 Marcus Samuel (d.1872) opened a shop near the Tower of London that sold shells and other decorative curios. From this start, the Samuel family built up an Oriental import/export business. One of the commodities in which the firm came to deal was kerosene oil.

The first delivery of oil to Britain by tanker was made in 1884. The Russian ship had been chartered by Frederick Lane. The following year Marcus Samuel (d.1927) was a member of a syndicate that shipped oil from the Far East. In 1890 he was approached by Mr Lane, who was acting as the representative of the French branch of the Rothschild family. Lane proposed an alliance of Mr Samuel's business connections in the Far East with the Rothschilds money. The formula worked and a substantial oil business mushroomed. The company sought to find petroleum sources in the Orient and struck oil in Borneo. In 1897 the Shell Transport & Trading Company was formed to separate the Samuels oil interests from their other trading activities. It was Lane who in 1902 orchestrated the formation of Shell Transport, a marketing alliance between Shell and Henri Deterding's business Royal Dutch of The Netherlands.

Samuel never developed any thorough understanding of the industry that he had become a major figure in. He preferred to keep on operating a small, 19^thC-style, family-filled office. He used his new wealth to advance his social ambitions, buying a country house and serving as the Lord Mayor of London in 1902. Lane became close to Mr Deterding. He played a part in allowing the Dutchman to promote his own interests, so that when Royal Dutch merged with Shell in 1906, the Dutch interests emerged with a 60% holding in the new Royal Dutch/Shell Group.

In 1982 the Samuel family's representation on Shell board ended when Peter Samuel stepped down from the body.

Location: The Shell Centre, 2 York Road, SE1 7LZ

Website: www.shell.co.uk

David Backhouse 2024