William Knox D'Arcy

William Knox D'Arcy was born in Newton Abbot, Devon, in 1849 and moved with his family to Queensland, Australia, where he trained as a lawyer in Rockhampton. His investment in the Mount Morgan gold mine, one of the richest gold deposits found in Australia, made him wealthy, and he returned to England in the late 1880s with the capital and connections to back speculative ventures, including the search for oil in Persia.

William Knox D'Arcy (1849-1917) financed the search that created BP. In 1901 he obtained a 60-year concession from the Shah of Persia to explore for and produce oil across about three-quarters of the country, paying £20,000 in cash, £20,000 in shares and 16% of annual profits. He hired engineer George Reynolds to lead drilling in the hot, remote south-west of Persia, but years of dry or disappointing wells drained his fortune. In 1905 the Burmah Oil Company joined through the Concessions Syndicate and took on most of the cost. By 1908 the backers were ready to give up; Reynolds kept drilling, and on May 26, 1908 his well at Masjid-i-Suleiman struck oil, the first commercial discovery in the Middle East. In April 1909 Burmah and D'Arcy formed the Anglo-Persian Oil Company to develop the field, with D'Arcy as a director. In 1914 the British government bought a 51% stake to secure fuel oil for the Royal Navy, which set the company's course for the next seven decades. D'Arcy died in 1917.