Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS (Abbreviation: UTP; English: PETRONAS University of Technology) was established on 10 January 1997 when PETRONAS was invited by the Government of Malaysia to set up a university. The university was formerly known as Institute of Technology PETRONAS (ITP) and was a wholly owned subsidiary of PETRONAS, the national oil company of Malaysia. It was registered with the Ministry of Higher Education on 26 April 1995 and obtained approval under the "Essential Higher Education Institute Regulation 1996". ITP began its operations at PERMATA, Bangi, Selangor on 3 July 1995. On 26 July 1995, ITP was registered as a private limited company and transferred its operations to Tronoh in the state of Perak, on 1 July 1996. Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS (UTP) was established on 10 January 1997 when PETRONAS was invited by the Malaysian government to set up a university. The campus is built on a 4 square kilometres (990 acres) site strategically located at Bandar Seri Iskandar, Tronoh, Perak, Malaysia. When UTP firstly moved to Tronoh, it took over the campus of Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM)'s engineering faculty, which has since moved to their new campus in Penang.