BP is a vertically integrated company operating in all areas of the oil and gas industry, including exploration and extraction, refining, distribution and marketing, power generation, and trading.

BP's origins date back to the founding of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company in 1908, established as a subsidiary of Burmah Oil Company to exploit oil discoveries in Iran. In 1935, it became the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and in 1954, adopted the name British Petroleum.

BP is the fourth largest investor-owned oil company in the world by revenue, behind only ExxonMobil, Shell, and TotalEnergies. The company trades on the London Stock Exchange (where it is a member of the FTSE 100 Index), Frankfurt Stock Exchange, and New York Stock Exchange.

As of 31 December 2018, BP had operations in 78 countries worldwide with the global headquarters in London, United Kingdom. BP operations are organized into three business segments, Upstream, Downstream, and renewables. BP, which employs about 1,800 people in oil trading and trades over 5 million barrels per day (790×103 m3/d) of oil and refined products, is the world's third-biggest oil trader after Royal Dutch Shell and Vitol.

BP has around 18,700 service stations worldwide. Its flagship retail brand is BP Connect, a chain of service stations combined with a convenience store, although in the US it is gradually being transitioned to the ampm format. BP also owns half of Kentucky-based convenience store company Thorntons LLC with ArcLight Capital Partners (who own the Gulf brand in the United States) since 2019.

Castrol is BP's main brand for industrial and automotive lubricants and is applied to a large range of BP oils, greases and similar products for most lubrication applications.

In the Global 2000 2022 list of Forbes, BP was ranked 50^th of the largest companies in the world.

According to Wikipedia; Forbes