The Partex Oil and Gas Group has played an instrumental role in the development of the international oil and gas industry through its presence in the historical oil concessions of the Middle East. Its founder, Calouste Gulbenkian, a descendant of an illustrious Armenian family, was a pioneer in the exploration and development of the oil fields in the Middle East.

In 1928, after laborious negotiations in which Calouste Gulbenkian had an influential role, the equity of the Turkish Petroleum Company (that subsequently changed its name to Iraq Petroleum Company, IPC, as it became known until its recent liquidation) were shared by four oil companies: Anglo-Persian Oil Co. (now BP), Royal Dutch-Shell Group, Compagnie Française des Pétroles (now TOTAL) and Near East Development Company (now ExxonMobil). Calouste Gulbenkian retained 5% of the capital and for that he became known as “Mr. Five Percent”.

In 1938, he founded Partex (Participations and Explorations Corporation, a company that is still part of the Partex Group) to manage his interests in the Middle East, namely a 75-year concession agreement signed in 1937 with the Oman authorities, followed in 1939 by a 75-year concession agreement with the Abu Dhabi authorities. Since then, Partex has actively supported the oil and gas developments in those countries through its participation in ADCO (now ADNOC Onshore), GASCO (now ADNOC Gas Processing), MUKHAIZNA, OLNG and PDO.

More recently, the Group has combined its traditional involvement in Abu Dhabi and Oman with a successful diversification of operations into other countries such as Algeria, Angola, Brazil, Kazakhstan and Portugal, consolidating a well-deserved reputation as a reliable partner with long-term vision and strong commitment.

On 4 November 2019 the ownership of the Partex Oil and Gas Group changed from its original shareholder, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, to PTT Exploration and Production Public Company Limited (PTTEP), an acquisition that will move Partex into a new strategy of growth. Today Partex is part of the PTTEP family and of the vision to expand business opportunities across several regions of the world, in particular in the Middle East.

Throughout its 80 years of history, Partex has developed solid relationships with Governments of the host countries as well as with their national oil companies, including ADNOC, KazMunaiGaz, Oman Oil Company, Petrobras, Sonangol and Sonatrach. The Partex Oil and Gas Group is also proud to have maintained strong partnerships with industry majors like BP, ExxonMobil, Occidental, Repsol, Shell and Total.

In fact, the key to our success rests with the partnerships that we were able to develop over the years based on mutual trust, sound business ethics and long-term commitment and they are an asset that Partex strongly cherishes and aims at further developing into new business initiatives.