William Knox D'Arcy
Businessman who founded the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, later BP.
Life magazine · via Wikipedia: William Knox D'Arcy · Public domain
He signed the D'Arcy Concession in 1901, which gave him rights to explore for oil across most of Persia.[1] D'Arcy founded the Anglo-Persian Oil Company in 1909, which later became BP.[1] Born on 11 October 1849 and dying on 1 May 1917, William Knox D'Arcy was a British-Australian entrepreneur who was a key figure in establishing Persia's oil and petrochemical sector.[1]
Quick Facts
- Born
- 11 October 1849
- Birthplace
- Newton Abbot, Devon, England
- Died
- 1 May 1917
- Place of death
- Stanmore, Middlesex, England
- Education
- Westminster School
- Known for
- D'Arcy Concession, founder of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company
- Spouse
- Elena Birkbeck (1872)
Facts from the source article.
Life and work
Negotiations with the Shah secured a sixty-year concession in May 1901 for £20,000.[2] On 23 October 1872, at St Patrick's Cathedral in Parramatta, D'Arcy wed Elena Birkbeck, who came from Rockhampton.[3] At the close of 1902, a drilling crew headed by George B. Reynolds started operations at Chiah Surkh.[4] His later residence was Stanmore Hall in Middlesex, and he passed away on 1 May 1917 at age 67.[5][6]
What the cited sources add
The Queensland Business Leaders Hall of Fame records that D'Arcy was posthumously inducted in 2012.[6] It adds that a billiard room and new dining room were created, and D'Arcy commissioned tapestries from William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones.[5]
References
- Wikipedia, "William Knox D'Arcy" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Abbasi, Sadegh, "Britain's Major Plunder of Iranian Oil in 1903", english.khamenei.ir, 4 November 2015 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "William Knox D'Arcy" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Jones, "The State and the Emergence of the British Oil Industry", Palgrave MacMillan, 1981, p. 130 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "William Knox D'Arcy" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: John Robert Peach, "The Greatest-Ever Mining Swindle in the Colonies", John Peach, www.peachbooksales.com, 2008 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "William Knox D'Arcy" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Yergin, "The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power", Simon & Schuster, 1991, p. 138–143 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "William Knox D'Arcy" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Bridget Cherry, Nikolaus Pevsner; "GREAT STANMORE", british-history.ac.uk (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "William Knox D'Arcy" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Hall of Fame", Queensland Business Leaders Hall of Fame; "Queensland Business Leaders Hall of Fame William Knox D'Arcy(1849 – 1917)", leaders.slq.qld.gov.au (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article William Knox D'Arcy (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.
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