Agip S.p.A., acronym for Azienda generale italiana petroli, was an Italian automotive gasoline, Diesel fuel, LPG, , fuel oil, and bitumen retailer established in 1926 and subsidiary of Eni
In 2013 Agip merged into Eni, 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 oil in
Emilia-Romagna and
Sicily, over an area of 40,000 km
2.
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, 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.
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, 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), 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 Automobiles of
Giovanni Agnelli, 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 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
Oil 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 (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 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
File:Iringa street.jpg|Iringa, Tanzania, 1970s
File:Novara vista cropped.jpg|Novara
File:Tankstelle Bahnhofsallee Doberlug-Kirchhain 2011 (Alter Fritz).JPG|Brandenburg
File:Agip Tankstelle.jpg|Italy
File:Bělehradská, čerpací stanice Agip.jpg|Czech Republic
File:D1Highway12Slovakia1.JPG|Slovakia
File:Ferrari F1-87 rear-right2 2015 Honda Collection Hall.jpg|Many racing cars, such as the Ferrari F1/87 have been sponsored by Agip.
See also
Further reading
External links
