Agip
Encyclopedia
Agip is an Italian
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 automotive gasoline and diesel retailer established in 1926. It is a subsidiary of the multinational petroleum company Eni
Eni
Eni S.p.A. is an Italian multinational oil and gas company, present in 70 countries, and currently Italy's largest industrial company with a market capitalization of 87.7 billion euros , as of July 24, 2008...

.

In 2003, Eni S.p.A. acquired Agip Petroli S.p.A., creating the Refining and Marketing Division (R&M) which continues to operate under the Agip brand.

History

Sinclair Oil
Sinclair Oil
Sinclair Oil Corporation is an American petroleum corporation, founded by Harry F. Sinclair on May 1, 1916 as the Sinclair Oil & Refining Corporation by combining the assets of 11 small petroleum companies. Originally a New York corporation, Sinclair Oil reincorporated in Wyoming in 1976...

 was a U.S. oil company that, with the Italian Ministry of National Economy in 1924, reached a fifty-year agreement for which both companies were issued a permit to conduct oil research in Emilia-Romagna
Emilia-Romagna
Emilia–Romagna is an administrative region of Northern Italy comprising the two historic regions of Emilia and Romagna. The capital is Bologna; it has an area of and about 4.4 million inhabitants....

 and in Sicily
Sicily
Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...

, for an area of 40,000 km ². Sinclair and the Italian ministry constituted a joint enterprise; 40% of the capital was the ministry's property, all expenditure incurred by Sinclair Oil and 25% of profits to the Italian ministry. The agreement was judged to cause serious damage to the nation and the opposition, headed by Giacomo Matteotti
Giacomo Matteotti
Giacomo Matteotti was an Italian socialist politician. On 30 May 1924, he openly spoke in the Italian Parliament alleging the Fascists committed fraud in the recently held elections, and denounced the violence they used to gain votes...

 and Don Sturzo, started a controversy which aligned the suspicion of corruption; Matteotti indeed had prepared a speech on this issue for June 12, but was killed two days earlier. Don Sturzo continued the controversy, stating in a public company was the only way for a national energy independence.

Coal
Coal
Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock usually occurring in rock strata in layers or veins called coal beds or coal seams. The harder forms, such as anthracite coal, can be regarded as metamorphic rock because of later exposure to elevated temperature and pressure...

 in Italy was scarce and of poor quality. It was imported from abroad at prices that seriously weighed on currency 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
Kingdom of Italy (1861–1946)
The Kingdom of Italy was a state forged in 1861 by the unification of Italy under the influence of the Kingdom of Sardinia, which was its legal predecessor state...

 ordered the establishment of the Azienda Generale Italiana Petroli (Agip), in the conduct of all activities relating to industry and the commerce of petroleum
Petroleum
Petroleum or crude oil is a naturally occurring, flammable liquid consisting of a complex mixture of hydrocarbons of various molecular weights and other liquid organic compounds, that are found in geologic formations beneath the Earth's surface. Petroleum is recovered mostly through oil drilling...

; the company was created in the form of joint stock companies. The share capital was given for a 60% from the Department of the Treasury, for a 20% by Istituto Nazionale delle Assicurazioni (INA) and the remaining 20% by the Social Insurance. The first president was Ettore Conti
Ettore Conti
Ettore Conti was an Italian civil engineer, electricity industrialist, and influential businessman....

, contractor in the electricity sector. The establishment of the company was attributed by many analysts to Giuseppe Volpi di Misurata, Ministry of Finance, and Joseph Belluzzo, Ministry for the national economy. Volpi di Misurata, however, was directly involved in oil-related interests, working together with Fiat
Fiat
FIAT, an acronym for Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino , is an Italian automobile manufacturer, engine manufacturer, financial, and industrial group based in Turin in the Italian region of Piedmont. Fiat was founded in 1899 by a group of investors including Giovanni Agnelli...

 of Giovanni Agnelli
Giovanni Agnelli
Giovanni Agnelli was an Italian entrepreneur, who founded Fiat car manufacturing in 1899.-Early life:The son of Edoardo Agnelli and Aniceta Frisetti, he was born in Villar Perosa, a small town near Pinerolo, Piedmont, still the main home and burial place of the Agnelli family...

, and with the financial backing of Banca Commerciale Italiana
Banca Commerciale Italiana
Banca Commerciale Italiana, founded in 1894, was once one of the largest banks in Italy. In 1999 it merged with a banking group consisting of Cassa di Risparmio delle Provincie Lombarde and Banco Ambroveneto, the former Banco Ambrosiano, which had merged in 1998. On 1 January 2003, the group's...

, which had searched for oil in Emilia-Romana, unsuccessfully.
In 1927 the Mining Act was issued, which gave the ownership of the subsoil to the State and imposed the rule that any oil-related activity was subject to authorization and / or government grant.

It experienced difficulties after the crisis of 1929, but began to flourish in the thirties. In 1933 a new law was issued in the field of protectionist refineries and Agip could operate with greater ease in this area.

The early stages and development

Agip had a facility for refining at Fiume and in 1936 it took over a refinery
Refinery
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 are as follows:...

 at Porto Marghera, owned by Volpi di Misurata. Soon after it made an agreement with Montecatini for the creation of the joint enterprise Anic
Azienda Nazionale Idrogenazione Combustibili
Azienda Nazionale Idrogenazione Combustibili S.p.A was the name of an Italian company, which was to pursue the derivation of fuel by hydrogenation of brown coal. It was created in 1936 by AGIP and Montecatini as a joint company....

 (Fuel Hydrogenation National Company), which was to pursue the derivation of fuel by hydrogenation of brown coal. Then Anic built two refineries to process the oil extracted in Albania
Albania
Albania , officially known as the Republic of Albania , is a country in Southeastern Europe, in the Balkans region. It is bordered by Montenegro to the northwest, Kosovo to the northeast, the Republic of Macedonia to the east and Greece to the south and southeast. It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea...

 from Azienda Italiana Petroli Albanesi
Azienda Italiana Petroli Albanesi
The Azienda Italiana Petroli Albanesi was a company created by Agip and active from 1935 to 1943....

 (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 give up to continue in some foreign investment, in particular it had to abandon their exploration campaigns in Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....

. It was the explorer Ardito Desio
Ardito Desio
Count Ardito Desio was an Italian explorer, mountain climber, geologist, and cartographer.-Early life:Desio was born in Palmanova, Friuli, Italy...

 who found oil in Libya
Libya
Libya is an African country in the Maghreb region of North Africa bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad and Niger to the south, and Algeria and Tunisia to the west....

 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 who wanted to explore the possibility of obtaining gasoline from synthetic chemistry.

Controversy

Agip is responsible for the Oshie gas flare in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. The 200 foot flare has been burning since 1972 and is located just outside the village of Akaraolu, home to about 1,700 families of farmers and fishers. The flare is a result of natural gas emissions that are a by-product of oil drilling. Natural gas by-products can either be harnessed for energy or set ablaze in a cheap effort to eliminate them. Many villagers must endure temperatures that can be up to 15 degrees hotter as a result of the flare or are even in danger of sustaining severe burns because of flaming liquids which sometimes are ejected together with the gas and rain back to earth.
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