Azienda Generale Italiana Petroli

The petroleum company AGIP (Azienda Generale Italiana Petroli), which became a division of ENI in 1953, discovered natural gas in the Po valley and sold it at low prices to industry. Labor was inexpensive, as rural migrants flooded into the cities, trade unions were weak and politically divided until…

…an outgrowth of Agip (Azienda Generale Italiana Petroli), an oil and gas agency set up by the Italian fascist government in the 1920s. In 1952 Enrico Mattei, a former resistance fighter, persuaded the Italian postwar government to coordinate the Agip gas and oil holdings in the new Eni; descendants…

…northern commissioner of Agip (Azienda Generale Italiana Petroli), a state-owned petroleum company, and given explicit instructions to liquidate the company and sell its assets to private (including foreign-owned) oil companies. Instead, Mattei directed the agency to increase exploration in the Po River valley, and soon the drillers succeeded in…