The National Benzole Company was formed in England in 1919 to market motor benzole, a by-product of coal carbonisation. For normal motor car engines it was blended with petrol as National Benzole mixture; by the 1950s there were over 250 benzole plants as sociated with gas works or the steel industry. With the decline of coking coal as a fuel, benzole production fell and in 1957 National Benzole was acquired by Shell-Mex & BP Ltd.
National was retained as an independent brand and merged with Power Petroleum, which had been bought in 1934. The "Benzole" was downplayed in the late 1960s as natural gas replaced town gas and National products sold by over 4,650 garages became simply petrol. When Shell and BP divorced in the 1970s, about 40% of the National stations switched to Shell, but the brand was kept by BP in England only.
Between 1981 and 1988 the name was slowly replaced by BP. However in 1992 the Scottish independent NEF reintroduced the brand under licence from BP and today it is used at over 100 small filling stations across the UK supplied by BP authorised distributors.
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(History kindly supplied by http://www.petrolmaps.co.uk)