Italy Becomes Europe’s southern Gas Hub

The European Union has, for two decades, underestimated the role natural gas would play in the energy transition, irrespective of any given energy transition scenario. Hence the scramble to find more gas internationally once the EU had decided to cut gas supplies from its major foreign supplier, Russia. The scramble was made all the worst as non-Russian producers of gas do not, over the next two - three years, have much extra supply capacity. Gas in liquid form, LNG, is even scarcer than piped gas.In the context of the looming gas crisis last autumn, Italy, which is very dependent on Russian gas imports, was quick off the mark. It engaged with different gas producers from Qatar to Mozambique. It will continue to import gas in LNG form from Egypt and will shortly add Israel to its list of suppliers. In November 2021 it started negotiating its first contract to buy more gas from Algeria which ensures that, by the end of 2023, its north African neighbour will increase its throughput of gas via the TransMed pipeline from 21bn cubic metres per annum to 30bn/cm. Earlier this year, Ente Nazionale dei Idrocarburi secured a broad range USD 1.5 billion contract with its Algerian counterpart, Sonatrach, to explore and develop new sources of gas, hydrogen, ammonia and electricity from renewable sources. ENI has three strong cards to play in Algeria which include: long standing relations going back 60 years between Sonatrach and ENI; the first ever underwater gas pipeline from Algeria to Sicily through Tunisia and under the Mediterranean, an Italian engineering feat which is a tribute to the country’s sophisticated oil and gas industry which spans every aspect of the hydrocarbons sector; and last but not least, the role ENI’s founder Enrico Mattei played in advising the Provisional Government of the Republic of Algeria in its difficult negotiations to gain independence from France, at a time when the latter attempted to prevent the recently discovered Saharan oil fields from belonging to the nascent country. Mattei died in 1963, a year after Algerian independence, in an unexplained plane crash.

Italy Becomes Europe’s southern Gas Hub

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