The story
1891 to 1976
The company, today known as BPCL, started as the Rangoon Oil and Exploration company, set up to explore the discoveries off Assam and Burma (now Myanmar) during the British colonial rule over 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 the 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 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
In 1976, the company was nationalised 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 Mumbai High Field.
In 2003, the government attempted to privatize the company. However, following a petition by the Centre for Public Interest Litigation, the Supreme Court restrained the Central government from privatizing Hindustan Petroleum and Bharat Petroleum without the approval of Parliament.
As counsel for the CPIL, Rajinder Sachar and Prashant Bhushan said that the only way to disinvest in the companies would be to repeal or amend the Acts by which they were nationalized in the 1970s.
As a result, the government would need a majority in both houses to push through any privatization.
Parliament enacted the Repealing and Amending Act, 2016 in May 2016, which repealed the legislation that had nationalized the company. In 2017, Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited received Maharatna status, putting it in the category of government-owned entities in India with the largest market capitalization and consistently high profits. In 2021, BPCL announced plans to invest US$4.05 billion to improve petrochemical capacity and refining efficiencies, over the next five years.
From Wikipedia’s article on Bharat Petroleum, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5