Iraqi Petroleum Company

Iraq Petroleum Company

Type	Consortium
Industry	Oil exploration and production
Fate	Nationalised in 1972a
Predecessor	Turkish Petroleum Company
Successor	Iraq National Oil Company
Founded	1929 (1929)
Founders	Anglo-Persian Oil Company Royal Dutch Shell Compagnie Française des Pétroles Near East Development Corporation Calouste Gulbenkian
Headquarters	London, United Kingdom
Areas served	Iraq Middle Eastb
Owners	BP Royal Dutch Shell ExxonMobil Total S.A. Partex
Footnotes / references a Although nominally still extant on paper. b Via associate companies.

The Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC), known prior to 1929 as the Turkish Petroleum Company (TPC), is an oil company which, between 1925 and 1961, had a virtual monopoly on all oil exploration and production in Iraq. Today, it is jointly owned by some of the world's largest oil companies and is headquartered in London, England.

In June 1972, the Ba'athist government in Iraq nationalised the IPC and its operations were taken over by the Iraq National Oil Company. The company "Iraq Petroleum Company" still remains extant, however, 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.

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 (now Syria and Iraq) contained substantial reservoirs of oil.

Since Mesopotamia was part of the Ottoman Empire, early negotiations for an oil concession centered on the capital of the empire, İstanbul, which was then known in the West as Constantinople, where the Ottoman sultan and his government resided. The first interest was shown by Imperial German banks and companies, already involved in the building of the Berlin-Baghdad railway, followed by British interests. In 1911, in an attempt to bring together competing British and German interests in the region, a British company known as African and Eastern Concession Ltd, was formed.