An act of 1974 and a short name built from a long one.

Petronas is a contraction. The full name is Petroliam Nasional Berhad, Malay for National Petroleum Limited, and English Wikipedia notes that the company is commonly styled in capitals as PETRONAS. It is a Malaysian oil and gas company with its head office in Kuala Lumpur, and its short name takes the first letters of the two main words, “Petro” and “Nas”.

The company was a creation of law. English Wikipedia says the Petroleum Development Act was tabled and approved in the Malaysian parliament in 1974, drafted by Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah and his associates on the instructions of the prime minister, Tun Abdul Razak. Petronas was established and incorporated on 17 August 1974 under the Companies Act 1965.

Petronas tells its own story in modest terms. On its brand-story page, the company says it began small, and that its exploration and production arm, Petronas Carigali, was incorporated in 1978. The same page describes the launch of the Petronas retail network in a later decade, starting with a single petrol station in Kuala Lumpur.

The name then reached the skyline. English Wikipedia says the company moved its head office into the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, part of the Kuala Lumpur City Centre development managed by its property arm, KLCC Property. A design agency involved with the retail brand linked the two events: Minale Tattersfield, which says it worked on a Petronas retail rebrand in 1995, quotes its energy-sector head David Davis as saying the brand needed a change to look consistent with a company “about to occupy the Twin Towers”.

The brand also travels abroad through retail and lubricants. English Wikipedia describes a deal under which a Brunei company imports and sells Petronas petroleum products through stations under the Petronas brand, and says Petronas is a recommended fuel and lubricant brand for several car makers, including Mercedes-Benz and the Malaysian makers Proton and Perodua.

Johan Ariff’s drop, a 2013 refresh and a flat mark.

The Petronas logo has a named designer. English Wikipedia says the corporate logo was created in 1974 by Dato’ Johan Ariff of Johan Design Associates. Its basic structure, the article explains, is geometric, combining an oil drop and the letter P, with the letter made visible by a triangle at the top right corner.

The same article reads the parts of the mark one by one. A solid circle inside the logo stands for the wheel in the oil and gas industry, while the outline of the drop suggests a driving system and the energy drawn from petroleum. The corporate colour is emerald green, chosen to reference the sea where oil and gas are found.

The company gives its own reading on its brand-story page. Petronas says the geometric structure represents the letter P, that the emerald green stands for the seas and the land, and that solid white stands for trust and integrity. In its account of the current mark, a single continuous line reflects a search for new solutions, the triangle points to the future and also represents the federal government, the state governments and Petronas, and the circle stands for the potential within people and communities.

The mark has been updated without being replaced. English Wikipedia says Petronas unveiled a refreshed version of its corporate logo at the 2013 Asia Oil and Gas Conference, describing it as the third iteration, and that a flat version followed in 2019. The company’s brand-story timeline also lists versions from 1974, 1990, 2013 and 2019. Through each change, the drop, the P and the green stayed in place.

Sound joined the identity later. English Wikipedia records that in 2021 Petronas introduced a sonic identity as part of a wider rebranding around the platform “Passionate about Progress”, blending contemporary musical textures with traditional Malaysian instruments for use in films, events and brand communications.

Energy companies and their marks.

Industrial company names tend to start as descriptions of people or processes. Many began with a founder’s surname, a pair of partners’ names joined by an ampersand, or a long legal title that listed what the firm made and where. Over time those titles were shortened in everyday use, and the short form often became the official name: a surname on its own, or a set of initials that customers and staff had been using for decades.

The marks that sit beside those names are usually simple shapes. Squares, ovals, diamonds and plain rules recur because they print cleanly on drums, sacks, vehicles, signage and paperwork, and because they hold their shape at very small and very large sizes. Many identities rely on a single corporate colour, applied across a wordmark and a few supporting elements, rather than a broad palette.

Mergers and spin-offs test these systems. When companies combine, the new group must choose whether to keep one name, join two, or invent a third; when a group later splits, each part needs a name and mark of its own. Those decisions, and the dates on which they took effect, are often the clearest record of how an industrial brand has changed.

A green drop on a silver car.

Motor racing has carried the Petronas mark far beyond Malaysia. English Wikipedia says Petronas was the main partner of the Sauber Petronas Formula One team from 1995 to 2005 and of BMW Sauber from 2006 to 2009, supplying fuel and lubricants, and that it also took the team on demonstration runs around Malaysia.

The move to Mercedes came at the end of 2009. Crash.net reported on 21 December 2009 that Mercedes Grand Prix had signed a long-term agreement making Petronas, which it called the Malaysian national oil and gas company, the title partner of the new Silver Arrows works team. From 2010, the report said, the team would race as the Mercedes GP Petronas F1 Team and carry Petronas branding across the car and team liveries, with the 2010 car due to appear in its new livery at Valencia on 1 February 2010. The same report noted that Petronas would remain title sponsor of the Malaysian Grand Prix at Sepang.

The partnership has continued under the team’s later names. English Wikipedia says Petronas has been a main sponsor of the Mercedes-AMG Petronas team since 2010 and that the title and technical partnership was extended from the 2026 season.

Two-wheel racing has carried the name too. English Wikipedia says Petronas has been the main sponsor of the Sepang Racing Team since 2017, then racing in Moto2 and Moto3 as Petronas Sprinta Racing, and that from 2023 it became title sponsor of a World Superbike team renamed the Petronas MIE Honda Racing Team.

Closer to home, the retail brand has had its own design work. Minale Tattersfield says it won a pitch in 2010 to evolve the Petronas retail brand and its Mesra convenience stores, removing exterior cladding and redesigning shop interiors, and that the logo and logotype were later refreshed in a separate exercise.

For a design guide, Petronas shows how one geometric mark can hold several meanings at once, a drop of oil, a letter P and a national story, and survive three updates with its shape and green intact. Compare Mercedes-AMG Petronas, the Formula One team that carries the name, and Shell, another energy company known by a single symbol. For this guide we use emerald, deep teal and mint with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Petronas’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.