The Burmah Oil Company was founded in Glasgow, Scotland in 1886 by David Sime Cargill to develop oil interests on the Indian subcontinent. It became an early and major shareholder in British Petroleum, so restricted its downstream interests to the subcontinent, where BP had no business. It played a major role in the oil industry in South Asia for about a century through its subsidiaries and in discovery of oil in the Middle East though its significant interest in British Petroleum.