STATOILSTATOILAfter oil was discovered in the North Sea in the early 1970s, the Norwegian Government decided to ensure that its
population shared in the benefits, earning them the soubriquet "The Blond blue-eyed Arabs of the North". A key instrument was the
establishment in 1972 of Den Norsk Stats Oljeselskap A/S (Statoil) to share in production and develop a refinery. Downstream a Statoil affiliate - Norol - bought BP's chain of nearly 1,000 service stations and in January 1976 these were merged with the small Hydro and OK branded chains. Fifteen years later, the Norol name was replaced on service stations by Statoil.
Statoil's first international expansion downstream was buying Esso's Swedish chain in 1985, followed by its Danish outlets a year later.
The next major acquisition was of BP's Irish operation in 1991, added to by the bulk of Conoco's Jet chain there a
couple of years later, although this network was sold during 2006 to the local group Topaz who continue to use the Statoil name under licence. Statoil also bought Mobil's Northern Norwegian outlets in 1992 and BP's remaining Swedish marketing assets in 1993.
Statoil service stations are now found in nine European countries and it is especially strong in the Baltic region.
As with other recent arrivals in the Nordic region, there are a surprising number of Statoil maps to be found.
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The maps shown above have come in the 1980s/90s from the Danish subsidiary of Statoil. From the left,
the first map is undated but probably from around 1990. Next are two later issues: - a small format booklet listing service stations with seven pages of maps at the back and the standard Denmark map on sale in Statoil stations which, like the booklet, shows their locations on the map. All three maps were prepared by Folia/Legindkort, but the scale crept up from 1:510,000 at the start of the decade to 1:500,000 after the ending of the Kort Stempel tax on maps.
Statoil in Denmark has also produced a series of
maps of Europe. The Europe and Great Britain maps both date from 1997 - there have never been Statoil filling stations in Britain.
The Europe map was a stock map from Freytag-Berndt of Austria with a card Statoil cover pasted on, but the map of Britain
was specially printed by the Budapest based firm, Cartographia.
Although the Danish subsidiary also sells maps of Sweden and Norway, the Statoil maps shown below are from the local operating companies.
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Left is a 1987 map of Sweden by Esselte Kartor. Both maps on the right are from around 1996 (the Norway one is undated) and were prepared by Maps International (although the Norwegian one also acknowledges Folia/Legindkort). All three maps are at 1:1 million and locate Statoil stations. |
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Statoil is one of the four largest new entrants into the Polish market following its liberalisation in the 1990s, and expanded in 2002 by buying the 61 stations of the Swedish company Preem. This atlas, at the relatively small scale of 1:1,000,000, is the first known Statoil map of the country and dates from 2005. Cartography was by Copernicus, and the maps mark all Statoil stations as well as the locations of radar speed traps - the only known oil company map to do so from any country. Image courtesy Michal Okonek |
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This is the only known map from Statoil's Irish subsidiary and is dated 1996.
It is basically the standard Bartholomew Visitors' map of Ireland with a Statoil card cover added to it.
Earliest Denmark image courtesy Richard Horwitz |
Maps: NorolNorol's 1983 map of Southern Norway was originally issued by Norsk Olje (Norol) in 1974 and still used the same basic cover design that was previously used by BP for a number of years. With details in Norwegian and English, and at a scale of 1:500,000 it was based on a map prepared by the Directorate of Military Survey in the UK in cooperation with Forsvarets karttjeneste in 1969, with roads updated at various times. |
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Text and layout © Ian Byrne, 2000-6 |
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