The Irish National Petroleum Corporation (INPC) is a semi-defunct Irish State-owned company which owned and operated the Whiddy Island Terminal on

Whiddy Island Whiddy Island ( ga, Oileán Faoide) is an island near the head of Bantry Bay in Ireland. It is approximately long and wide. The topography comprises gently-rolling glacial till, with relatively fertile soil. As late as 1880 the island had a res ...

and Whitegate refinery at Whitegate, both in

County Cork County Cork ( ga, Contae Chorcaí) is the largest and the southernmost county of Ireland, named after the city of Cork, the state's second-largest city. It is in the province of Munster and the Southern Region. Its largest market towns are ...

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

. It was founded in 1979 and was involved in acquiring oil,

refining {{Unreferenced, date=December 2009 Refining (also perhaps called by the mathematical term affining) is the process of purification of a (1) substance or a (2) form. The term is usually used of a natural resource that is almost in a usable form, b ...

it, and distributing petroleum products to consumers in Ireland. Its main assets were sold to TOSCO Corp (later

Phillips Petroleum Phillips Petroleum Company was an American oil company incorporated in 1917 that expanded into petroleum refining, marketing and transportation, natural gas gathering and the chemicals sectors. It was Phillips Petroleum that first found oil in the ...

) in 2001. , the INPC has no staff, but has an active three-person board who manage a portion of the proceeds from the 2001 sale which was set aside for ongoing liabilities and claims.

History

The Whitegate Oil Refinery, built in 1959, was threatened to be closed by its private owners in the early 1980s. To avoid closure of Ireland's only refinery, and become completely reliant on foreign imports, the refinery was purchased by the INPC in 1982. The Fuels (Control of Supplies) Order 1982 mandated that all importers of petroleum to Ireland purchase a proportion from the INPC, to ensure the refinery's success. The INPC acquired the Whiddy Island Terminal, destroyed in the 1979 Whiddy Island disaster, in 1985, which it repaired and reopened by 1998. The National Oil Reserves Agency (NORA) was created in 1995 as a subsidiary of INPC and continues to manage Ireland's strategic oil reserves. Government philosophy later shifted away from owning strategic assets and towards

privatisation Privatization (also privatisation in British English) can mean several different things, most commonly referring to moving something from the public sector into the private sector. It is also sometimes used as a synonym for deregulation when ...

, and in 1999 the INPC was asked by Minister for Public Enterprise

Mary O'Rourke Mary O'Rourke (; born 31 May 1937) is an Irish former Fianna Fáil politician who served as Leader of the Seanad and Leader of Fianna Fáil in the Seanad from 2002 to 2007, Deputy leader of Fianna Fáil from 1994 to 2002, Minister for Public ...

to investigate alternative commercial opportunities for its assets. In 2000, American multinational TOSCO Corp announced its intention to acquire the INPC's assets (excluding NORA), which was completed in 2001.

History

References

Further reading