1979 to 2000
The British Government sold 80 million shares of BP at $7.58 in 1979 as part of Thatcher-era privatisation. This sale represented slightly more than 5% of BP's total shares and reduced the government's ownership of the company to 46%. After the worldwide stock market crash on 19 October 1987, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher initiated the sale of an additional GBP7.5 billion ($12.2 billion) of BP shares at 333 pence, representing the government's remaining 31% stake in the company. In November 1987 the Kuwait Investment Office purchased a 10.06% interest in BP, becoming the largest institutional shareholder. The following May, the KIO purchased additional shares, bringing their ownership to 21.6%. This raised concerns within BP that operations in the United States, BP's primary country of operations, would suffer. In October 1988, the British Department of Trade and Industry required the KIO to reduce its shares to 9.6% within 12 months.
Peter Walters was the company chairman from 1981 to 1990. During his period as chairman he reduced company's refining capacity in Europe. In 1982, the downstream assets of BP Canada were sold to Petro Canada. In 1984, Standard Oil of California was renamed to Chevron Corporation; and it bought Gulf Oil—the largest merger in history at that time. To settle the anti-trust regulation, Chevron divested many of Gulf's operating subsidiaries, and sold some Gulf stations and a refinery in the eastern United States to British Petroleum and Cumberland Farms in 1985. In 1987, British Petroleum negotiated the acquisition of Britoil and the remaining publicly traded shares of Standard Oil of Ohio. At the same year it was listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange where its share were traded until delisting in 2008.
Walters was replaced by Robert Horton in 1989. Horton carried out a major corporate down-sizing exercise removing various tiers of management at the Head Office. In 1992, British Petroleum sold off its 57% stake in BP Canada (upstream operations), which was renamed as Talisman Energy. John Browne, who had joined BP in 1966 and rose through the ranks to join the board as managing director in 1991, was appointed group chief executive in 1995.
British Petroleum entered into Russian market in 1990 and opened its first service station in Moscow in 1996. In 1997, it acquired 10% stake in Russian oil company Sidanco, which later became a part of TNK-BP.