The Union Cabinet led by PM Narendra Modi has given its consent for setting up of Indian Institute of Petroleum and Energy (IIPE) at Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh as "an Institute of national importance. The responsibility of mentoring the institute has been taken up by IIT Kharagpur.
The institute will have the governance structure as well as legal mandate to grant degrees in a manner similar to that enjoyed by IITs and also a separate act will also impart the required status to the institute to become a Centre of Excellence in petroleum and energy studies.
Andhra Pradesh government has allocated 200 acres of land for setting up IIPE at Sabbavaram Mandal in the Visakhapatnam district. IIPE has been registered as a Society under the AP Society Registration Act, 2001 on April 18, 2016.
The cabinet meeting has also approved Rs. 655.46 crore as capital expenditure to set up IIPE and a contribution of Rs. 200 crore towards its Endowment Fund (in addition to a contribution of Rs. 200 crore from Oil Companies towards the Endowment Fund). The decision to set up this institute was committed under the 13 Schedule of Andhra Pradesh Reorganization Act, 2014. The objective is to meet the quantitative and qualitative gap in the supply of skilled manpower for the petroleum sector and to promote research activities needed for the growth of the sector.
A temporary campus of IIPE has been set up from academic session 2016-17 from the Andhra University campus with two undergraduate programmes namely, Petroleum Engineering, and Chemical Engineering (with capacity of 50 students each).