The
Anglo-Persian Oil Company (
APOC) was an English company founded in 1908 following the discovery of a large
oil field in
Masjed Soleiman,
Iran. It was the first company to extract
petroleum from
Iran. In 1935 APOC was renamed the
Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (
AIOC) and in 1954 it became the British Petroleum Company (BP), one of the antecedents of the modern
BP public limited company.