ERG

Brief History

Founded 1938 by Edoardo Garrone as an oil refining company in Genova, Italy, Erg started distributing petroleum products in the 1960s. It moved into the big time in 1984 by buying Elf's Italian chain of 780 service stations and nearly trebled its size in 1988 by acquiring Chevron’s Italian subsidiary later expanding its network by taking on 110 former AGIP and IP stations in 1997 and around 200 Shell outlets in summer 2000. However since 2006 its focus has been increasingly on renewable energy. In 2010 it merged its downstream operations with those of Total, owning 51% of the resulting TotalErg, which is Italy's third largest chain of service stations with over 3,000 outlets. It has since sold its refining interests and has become the largest wind power generator in Italy.

A small ERG streetside station in Rome.

Although ERG briefly retailed fuel in the Spanish market, working with Meroil, it later sold this operation to Saras.

Road maps

This ERG map of Italy dates from 1987 and uses the image of Superman from the popular film series. The cover highlights the network of 2,850 sales outlets across all of Italy and the modern refining process. Inside, the map is at 1:1,000,000, printed by Bonati & Scalenghe, as an update to a 1983 design. Map images courtesy of Jef Ballardini