15 April 2009: Grangemouth Oil Refinery

Founded on 14 April 1909 as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, BP acquired Scottish Oils in 1919.

In 1924 Scottish Oils built Grangemouth Oil Refinery to process Middle Eastern crude oil, as oil production from West Lothian shale was declining.  By the late 1940s, BP owned 160 hectares of the site, moving on to process North Sea crude oil on its discovery in the 1970s.

Grangemouth is Scotland’s only oil refinery and the second oldest of nine in the UK.  It has the capacity to refine in excess of 10 million tonnes of crude oil per year.  In 2002 Edinburgh became the first city in the world to offer both sulphur free unleaded petrol and sulphur free diesel, when BP installed pioneering hydrocracking technology at Grangemouth.