Agip (''Azienda Generale Italiana Petroli'', en, General Italian Oil Company) is an Italian automotive gasoline, diesel, LPG,

lubricant A lubricant (sometimes shortened to lube) is a substance that helps to reduce friction between surfaces in mutual contact, which ultimately reduces the heat generated when the surfaces move. It may also have the function of transmitting forces, t ...

fuel oil Fuel oil is any of various fractions obtained from the distillation of petroleum (crude oil). Such oils include distillates (the lighter fractions) and residues (the heavier fractions). Fuel oils include heavy fuel oil, marine fuel oil (MFO), bun ...

, and

bitumen Asphalt, also known as bitumen (, ), is a sticky, black, highly viscous liquid or semi-solid form of petroleum. It may be found in natural deposits or may be a refined product, and is classed as a pitch. Before the 20th century, the term a ...

retailer established in 1926. It has been a subsidiary of the multinational petroleum company

Eni Eni S.p.A. () is an Italian multinational energy company headquartered in Rome. Considered one of the seven "supermajor" oil companies in the world, it has operations in 69 countries with a market capitalization of US$54.08 billion, as of 11 Ap ...

since 2003, when Eni acquired Agip Petroli S.p.A., creating the Refining and Marketing Division (R&M).

History

In 1924, Sinclair Oil, a U.S. oil company, and the Italian Ministry of National Economy created a fifty-year joint venture agreement to explore for oil in Emilia-Romagna and Sicily, over an area of 40,000 km². 40% of the capital was held by the ministry, all expenditure was incurred by Sinclair Oil and 25% of profits went to the Italian ministry. The political opposition, headed by Giacomo Matteotti and

Don Sturzo Luigi Sturzo (; 26 November 1871 – 8 August 1959) was an Italian Catholic priest and prominent politician. He was known in his lifetime as a "clerical socialist" and is considered one of the fathers of the Christian democratic platform. He wa ...

, alleged that the joint venture was damaging to the nation and started a controversy which led to suspicions of corruption; Matteotti indeed was killed two days before he was due to give a speech on this issue. Don Sturzo continued the controversy, stating that a public company was the only way to maintain national energy independence. Coal in Italy was scarce and of poor quality. It was imported from abroad at prices that weighed on Italy’s trade balance and limited industrial growth. Power plants, which were not very developed and mainly concentrated in the north of the country, could not satisfy the needs of energy.

The constitution of the company and the ''ad aziendam'' laws

With a royal decree on April 3, 1926, the government of the Kingdom of Italy established the ''Azienda Generale Italiana Petroli'' (AGIP), a

joint stock company A joint-stock company is a business entity in which shares of the company's stock can be bought and sold by shareholders. Each shareholder owns company stock in proportion, evidenced by their shares (certificates of ownership). Shareholders are ...

, to conduct all activities relating to the petroleum industry. 60 percent of the share capital was held by the Ministry of the Treasury, 20% by

Istituto Nazionale Assicurazioni INA Assitalia S.p.A. was an insurance company, operating on the Italian market from 1912 to 2013. In the last years it belonged to the Assicurazioni Generali group. History INA, Istituto Nazionale delle Assicurazioni, was a public entity specia ...

(INA), and the remaining 20% by the Italian Social Insurance fund. The first president was Ettore Conti, a contractor in the electricity sector. The establishment of the company was attributed by many analysts to Giuseppe Volpi di Misurata, Ministry of Finance, and Giuseppe Belluzzo, Ministry for the National Economy. Volpi di Misurata, however, was directly involved in oil-related interests, working together with

FIAT Fiat Automobiles S.p.A. (, , ; originally FIAT, it, Fabbrica Italiana Automobili di Torino, lit=Italian Automobiles Factory of Turin) is an Italian automobile manufacturer, formerly part of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, and since 2021 a subsidiary ...

Giovanni Agnelli Giovanni Agnelli (13 August 1866 – 16 December 1945) was an Italian businessman, who founded Fiat car manufacturing in 1899. Early life The son of Edoardo Agnelli and Aniceta Frisetti, he was born in 1866 in Villar Perosa, a small town near ...

, and with the financial backing of Banca Commerciale Italiana, which had searched unsuccessfully for oil in Emilia-Romagna. In 1927 a ''Mining Act'' was enacted, which gave the ownership of the subsoil to the State and imposed the rule that any oil-related activity was subject to government authorization and/or grant. Agip experienced difficulties after the crisis of 1929 but began to flourish in the 1930s. In 1933 a new law was issued that restrained protectionist

refineries A refinery is a production facility composed of a group of chemical engineering unit processes and unit operations refining certain materials or converting raw material into products of value. Types of refineries Different types of refineries ar ...

and Agip could operate with greater ease in this area.

Early stages and development

Agip had a facility for refining at Fiume and in 1936 it took over a refinery at Porto Marghera, owned by Volpi di Misurata. Soon after it made an agreement with Montecatini to create a joint enterprise, Anic (Fuel Hydrogenation National Company), which was to pursue the derivation of fuel by hydrogenation of brown coal. Anic built two refineries to process the oil extracted in Albania from

Azienda Italiana Petroli Albanesi The Azienda Italiana Petroli Albania (AIPA) was a company created by Italian railways and later controlled by AGIP, active from 1935 to 1943. History Albanian oil The first oil searches in Albania were started during the First World War by ...

(AIPA), a subsidiary of Agip. However, the Albanian oil was of poor quality and its processing proved uneconomical. Simultaneously, however, because of the costs to support colonial campaigns, Agip had to exit some foreign investments, in particular their exploration campaigns in Iraq. It was the explorer

Ardito Desio Count Ardito Desio (18 April 1897 – 12 December 2001) was an Italian explorer, mountain climber, geologist, and cartographer.

who found oil in Libya and in 1939 came the so-called "Petrolibia operation", in which Agip was linked to FIAT, with which the year before it had created an Italian company for synthetic fuels, to explore the possibility of obtaining gasoline from synthetic chemistry.

Gallery

Iringa street.jpg,

Iringa Iringa is a city in Tanzania with a population of 151,345 (). It is situated at a latitude of 7.77°S and longitude of 35.69°E. The name is derived from the Hehe language, Hehe word ''lilinga'', meaning fort. Iringa is the administrative capita ...

, Tanzania, 1970s Novara vista cropped.jpg, Novara Tankstelle Bahnhofsallee Doberlug-Kirchhain 2011 (Alter Fritz).JPG, Brandenburg Agip Tankstelle.jpg, Italy Bělehradská, čerpací stanice Agip.jpg, Czech Republic D1Highway12Slovakia1.JPG, Slovakia

References

External links