The Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC), formerly known as the Turkish Petroleum Company (TPC), is an oil company that had a virtual monopoly on all oil exploration and production in Iraq between 1925 and 1961. It is jointly owned by some of the world's largest oil companies and headquartered in London, England, although today it is only a paper entity with historical rights and plays no part in the modern development of Middle Eastern oil. In June 1972, the Ba'athist government in Iraq nationalized the IPC and its operations were taken over by the Iraq National Oil Company. The company "Iraq Petroleum Company" still remains extant, however, only on paper and one associated company – the Abu Dhabi Petroleum Company (ADPC, formerly Petroleum Development (Trucial Coast) Ltd) – also continues with its original shareholding intact. The related Iraq Petroleum Group was an association of companies that played a major role in the discovery and development of oil resources in areas of the Middle East outside Iraq. History Turkish Petroleum Company The forerunner of the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC) was the Turkish Petroleum Company (TPC), which grew out of the growing belief, in the late 19th century, that Mesopotamia (Iraq and parts of Syria) contained substantial reservoirs of oil. Since Mesopotamia was an Ottoman possession, early negotiations for an oil concession centered in the empire's capital, Constantinople. The first interest was shown by Imperial German banks and companies, already involved in building the Berlin-Baghdad railway. In 1911, in an attempt to bring together the competing British and German interests in the region, a British company known as African and Eastern Concession Ltd, was formed. In 1912, this company became the Turkish Petroleum Company (TPC), formed with the purpose of acquiring concessions from the Ottoman Empire to explore for oil in Mesopotamia. The owners were a group of large European companies – Deutsche Bank, the Anglo Saxon Oil Company (a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell), the National Bank of Turkey (a British concern) – and Armenian businessman Calouste Gulbenkian. The driving force behind its creation was Gulbenkian, and the largest single shareholder was the British government-controlled Anglo-Persian Oil Company, which by 1914 held 50% of the shares. TPC received a promise of a concession from the Ottoman government, but the outbreak of World War I in 1914 put a stop to all exploration plans. Deutsche Bank brought with it a concession granted to