As coincidence would have it, 26 May could become a pair of bookend dates for BP (formerly British Petroleum, formerly the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), formerly the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC), formerly the dream of William Knox D’Arcy, extraordinarily wealthy gold mine owner in England who managed to obtain exclusive oil exploration rights to most of Persia)

Tomorrow, 26 May 2010, BP engineers and technicians and laborers and shareholders will try to stop the oil that has been flowing for more than month from a blown out a well a mile beneath the sea.

The plan is to shoot a cementing mud down into the well (- a maneuver that BP is calling Top Kill. There doesn’t appear to be any reason for anyone else to call it that, although many do.) If BP’s CEO Tony Hayward, receives a phone call saying they’ve managed to stop the million or perhaps millions of gallons that currently gush daily, he might well say, “If this is true, all our troubles are over.”

Which would be ironic. For those were the words the above mentioned founder of APOC, Mr D’Arcy, said upon receiving a telegram from Persia, announcing that “oil spewed into the dawn sky,” on this date in 1908.

the information in this post is taken from the History of BP available at BP.com.

more BP history to come – highlights from between the bookends.