European Petroleum Union

The European Petroleum Union ( EPU ) was one of the predecessor companies of BP .

Origin and development

At the beginning of the 20th century, John D. Rockefeller's American Standard Oil had a quasi-monopoly in global petroleum exports. In order to become more independent of this, especially in Europe, the Russian oil wells, which were mainly used nationally at the time, offered themselves.

The German bank founded in 1904 in Berlin, the German petroleum corporation (DPAG), set up by activities in Russia. It invested in the Kazbek syndicate in Grozny , which was connected to the acquired Steaua Română , and bought the petroleum product company in Baku .

In addition, Deutsche Bank concluded a transport agreement with The Shell Transport and Trading Company (now Royal Dutch Shell ) for Romanian oil from Steaua Română for import into Germany. That was a failure, as Standard Oil immediately lowered the price to dumping level .

In order to get out of this quasi- monopoly situation, talks were held for Russian oil between Deutsche Bank, the Naftaproduktionsaktiebolaget Bröderna Nobel ( Branobel ) in Baku , which was owned by Robert Nobel and owned by the Nobel brothers and was the second largest oil company in the world after Standard Oil at the time and largest oil producer in Russia, as well as the second largest company in Russia, Société commerciale et Industrielle de Naphte Caspienne et de la Mer Noire, Société Anonyme ( BNITO in Russian). It belonged to Alphonse de Rothschild (son of James de Rothschild ) in Paris and performed internationally.

Together with other companies and a capital of over 30 million marks, the three formed the European Petroleum Union GmbH in Bremen in 1906 . Deutsche Bank, which DPAG brought into EPU, held 50.4% of the capital. In Germany, the EPU was represented from 1906 by the German Petroleum Sales Society ( DPVG ).

With the end of the First World War and the end of German oil interests in Romania, Deutsche Bank concentrated its oil interests again on DPAG. In 1922, Deutsche Bank and Disconto-Gesellschaft decided to merge both oil interests in DPAG / DPVG.

In 1926 the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) urged the DPVG and its competitor in Germany OLEX to merge and took a 40% stake in the new company. From then on the company was called OLEX Deutsche Petroleum-Vertriebsgesellschaft mbH . The Anglo-Persian Oil Company increased its shares to 75% in April 1929 and to 100% in 1931, thus taking over all the shares of the European Petroleum Union (EPU) and the Deutsche Erdöl-Aktiengesellschaft . In 1930 the company was renamed OLEX German Petrol and Petroleum Company, the predecessor company of Deutsche BP AG .

BP product trademark (until 1922)

In Great Britain the EPU had been represented since 1906 by a distribution company called the British Petroleum Company , which was confiscated by the British government at the outbreak of World War I and transferred to the Anglo-Persian Oil Company in 1917 .

This is how BP became the brand name for marketing the oil products of what would later become the energy company BP .

Similarity of names

After the conquest of France, National Socialist European plans provided for the name European Petrol Company to be used for a German-controlled oil company, in particular through the "acquisition" of French shares (according to occupation law) in the "Colombia" Societate Franco-Română de Petrol in Bucharest , the value of which was calculated at over 15 billion Reichsmarks. Ultimately, however, the name Continental Oil , or Konti-Oil for short , prevailed for the successful project .

literature

International and Multinational and multilateral Companies in the Russian Empire before 1914: The integration of Russia into the World Economy ( Memento from February 20, 2009 in the Internet Archive )

supporting documents

^ Letter from Hans Richard Hemmen to the Foreign Office March 15, 1941, at the German Central Archives of the GDR in Potsdam, Film 5166: Ministerialrat Dr. Fischer from the Reich Ministry of Economics as a representative of the European Petrol Company, newly founded with Reich funds, which takes Colombia into its own operation ... negotiates ... before the deal ... The folder Berliner Handelsgesellschaft BHG of the same archive, Doc. No. 16087 reports on it how pressure was put on the Romanians in Paris to approve the transfer, although there were no formal prerequisites, evidence of legal acquisition. Here Abs calls his future empire Continentale Petroleum AG : Letter from Kurt Hoffmann to Alfred Broege from the BHG dated February 10, 1941.

[1] Letter from Hans Richard Hemmen to the Foreign Office March 15, 1941, at the German Central Archives of the GDR in Potsdam, Film 5166: Ministerialrat Dr. Fischer from the Reich Ministry of Economics as a representative of the European Petrol Company, newly founded with Reich funds, which takes Colombia into its own operation ... negotiates ... before the deal ... The folder Berliner Handelsgesellschaft BHG of the same archive, Doc. No. 16087 reports on it how pressure was put on the Romanians in Paris to approve the transfer, although there were no formal prerequisites, evidence of legal acquisition. Here Abs calls his future empire Continentale Petroleum AG : Letter from Kurt Hoffmann to Alfred Broege from the BHG dated February 10, 1941.