The Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) was a British company founded in 1909 following the discovery of a large oil field in Masjed Soleiman, Persia (Iran). The British government purchased 51% of the company in 1914, gaining a controlling number of shares, effectively nationalizing the company. It was the first company to extract petroleum from Iran. In 1935 APOC was renamed the "Anglo-Iranian Oil Company" (AIOC) when Reza Shah Pahlavi formally asked foreign countries to refer to Persia by its endonym Iran. In 1954, it was renamed again to the "British Petroleum Company", one of the antecedents of the modern BP public limited company. The government of Mohammad Mosaddegh nationalized the company's local infrastructure assets and gave the new company the name National Iranian Oil Company. The D'Arcy oil concession Exploration and discovery In 1901, William Knox D'Arcy, a millionaire London socialite, negotiated an oil concession with Mozaffar al-Din Shah Qajar of Persia. He financed this with capital he had made from his shares in the highly profitable Mount Morgan mine in Queensland, Australia. D'Arcy assumed exclusive rights to prospect for oil for 60 years in a vast tract of territory including most of Persia. In exchange the Shah received £20,000 (£ million today), an equal amount in shares of D'Arcy's company, and a promise of 16% of future profits. D'Arcy hired geologist George Bernard Reynolds to do the prospecting in the Persian desert. Conditions were extremely harsh: "small pox raged, bandits and warlords ruled, water was all but unavailable, and temperatures often soared past 50°C". After several years of prospecting, D'Arcy's fortune dwindled away and he was forced to sell most of his rights to a Glasgow-based syndicate, the Burmah Oil Company. By 1908, having sunk more than £500,000 into their Persian venture and found no oil, D'Arcy and Burmah decided to abandon exploration in Persia. In early May 1908, they sent Reynolds a telegram telling him that they had run out of money and ordering him to "cease work, dismiss the staff, dismantle anything worth the cost of transporting to the coast for re-shipment, and come home." Reynolds delayed following these orders and in a stroke of luck, struck oil shortly after, on 26 May 1908. However, according to Arnold Wilson, "The service rendered by G.B. Reynolds to the British empire and to British industry and to Persia was never recognized." Creation of APOC On 14 April 1909, Burmah