Thursday, Month 26, 2011
On May 26, 1908, seven years after signing an agreement giving him oil exploration rights in Persia, Australian-British speculator William Knox D‘Arcy’s team of surveyors make the first oil strike in the Middle East at Masjid-i-Suleiman, Persia (now Iran). The fountain of oil spews 50 feet into the air from a drill reaching 1,180 feet into the ground. Within a year of the oil discovery, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company in incorporated. Shortly after, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company opens for trading in London and Glasgow where enthusiastic investors eager to acquire stock in the company. During World War I, the British government becomes a majority stockholder of the company that would become BP.
In recent news, according to a University of Central Florida scientist, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010 caused by BP—one of the world’s largest energy companies—and the dispersants associated with the clean up, may be contributing to the unusually high number of dolphins dying in the Gulf of Mexico. According to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a total of 153 bottlenose dolphin carcasses have washed up on the Gulf coast since January this year. On April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion killed 11 people and released an estimated 17 to 39 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Over 1,000 animals have been reported dead from the oil spill, including many already on the endangered species list.
