The Company

ENAP in Magallanes

Empresa Nacional del Petróleo was born five years after the discovery of the first oil deposit in the country, at the Springhill sector, Tierra del Fuego Island, on December 29, 1945.  After such finding, the explorers team headed by the engineer Eduardo Simian Gallet, made several prospections and elaborated on the economic feasibility studies, then recommending CORFO to create ENAP, to commercially exploit the deposits discovered in Magallanes.

For this purpose, at the beginning of the 1950’s, ENAP built Cerro Sombrero small town, where the employees of the different oil works distributed across Tierra del Fuego Island lived for half a century.  In 2008, Cerro Sombrero was appointed by the Bicentennial Commission as one of the most relevant 18 architectural works of the XX century in the country.

Since the 1950’s ENAP exploits the only hydrocarbon deposits in the country and it provides oil and port logistic services to important clients that operate in the energy area in the southern region.

The first logistic facilities for fuels transportation, storage and distribution were also built during the 1950’s, as well as Gregorio maritime terminal, in front of the Strait of Magellan.  The Gregorio Refining Plant was also built together with them, which nowadays processes 17,000 crude oil barrels/day, and 18,500 similar barrels of liquefied natural gas.  This Refining Plant provides the Magallanes Region with fuels, and it also exports a part of its production to the Argentine southern provinces.

The important industrial growth at Magallanes made the first greatest impact on the rest of the country in 1954, when ENAP started the Concón Refining Plant, nowadays Aconcagua.  It continued in 1962, with the start-up of the Cullen Gasoline Plant, and simultaneously ENAP’s Refining Plant was projected at Bío-Bío Region, which was started-up in 1968.

Other ENAP’s productive plants at Magallanes are Posesión and Cabo Negro, the latter producing 853,000 cubic meters of propane, butane and natural gasoline.

The top oil production at Magallanes was achieved in the 1980’s, when ENAP started with the production of the off-shore deposits, with the installation of several groups of oil platforms in the Strait of Magellan.

Nowadays ENAP’s efforts at Magallanes are concentrated in the search of new hydrocarbon deposits, either with its own resources or in alliance with other companies, with the modality of Oil Operation Special Agreements.