BP is one of Britain's largest companies and one of the world's largest oil and petrochemicals groups. During the company's first 6 decades, its prime focus lay in the Middle East, but from the late 1960s the focus shifted westwards, towards the USA and Britain itself.

Today, BP is an international company, operating in over 70 countries. Its key strengths are in oil and gas exploration and production; the refining, marketing and supply of petroleum products; and the manufacturing and marketing of chemicals. There are around 1300 BP service stations in the UK.

BP and the environment

As a major supplier of carbon based fuels, which are strongly linked to climate change, BP play a part in finding and implementing solutions to this environmental problem. BP continually operate an efficiency improvement programme aimed at lessening emissions. They also constantly develop ways to measure emissions from the products they develop and sell.

They support cleaner fuels with their sales of natural gas increasing and by offering BP Ultimate at around 1000 of their UK service stations. BP Ultimate burns more efficiently and cleans your engine as you drive, so is not only kinder to your car, offering better performance but also produces less harmful emissions and gives you more mpg.

BP also invests in energy from renewable sources like the sun, wind or water which produce no carbon emissions. This includes a solar farm near Merseburg in Germany - one of the largest in the world and a jointly owned 22.5 megawatt wind farm near Rotterdam in The Netherlands, both opened in 2004.

BP's Fuel Options

BP Ultimate Unleaded has a research octane level of 97. Standard unleaded petrol has a research octane level of 95. This, on average, gives increased power in certain vehicles.

According to BP, BP Ultimate can give, on average, a 7% improvement in power, a 5% improvement in acceleration and a 6% improvement in fuel economy, in comparison to Unleaded Regular 95 petrol.

In comparison to regular diesel, BP Ultimate Diesel can improve a vehicle's power by up to 10%.

BP have now introduced BP Ultimate 102 unleaded - a precision engineered, high performance fuel to some of their forecourts. This fuel is offered specially for private motor sport enthusiasts and has a high octane number of 102. This means it burns more completely so highly tuned engines perform at their best.