Natural gas represents 40% of the country’s energy needs, and 40% of it come from Russia. An Italian government delegation went to Algeria, Qatar, Congo and Angola, with the aim of identifying ways to diversify its supplies.
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It took only a few hours for the machine to start. Monday, February 28, four days after the beginning of the Russian offensive in Ukraine, the Italian Foreign Minister Luigi di Maio, was in Algiers, accompanied by CEO of the Italian Energy Giant Eni, Claudio Descalzi, to start a International tour of the country’s leading gas suppliers. The objective of this delegation? Take stock of the possibilities of additional deliveries, to estimate the margins of maneuver of Italy on the energy front and, above all, the possibility of new contracts, while many voices called for a stop of procurement contracts Russian gas.
“We must protect the Italian businesses and families with the effects of this war,” said the Head of Italian diplomacy, at the exit of his meeting with the Algerian president, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, illustrating the new top priority of La farnesina (the Italian equivalent of the Quai d’Orsay). Subsequently, the prospect of immediate shutdown of deliveries was somewhat remote, but the effort of Italian diplomacy did not stop. On March 6, the same delegation was visiting Qatar, then on March 12th and 13th, she went to Congo and Angola, always with the aim of identifying ways to diversify her supplies.
Two years after the bursting of the pandemic of Covid-19, which had seen in a few days the entire Italian diplomatic staff turn into gigantic purchasing center, part in search of masks and respirators, the Italian ministry Foreign affairs has been mocked in no time in energy broker, with the usual mix of imagination and pragmatism that characterizes it.
A fragile situation
On the subject, Italy has a lot to do. Indeed, natural gas represents 40% of Italian energy needs, and 40% of it are of Russian origin (a proportion that has steadily increased in recent years). In other words: on the 76 billion cubic meters consumed in Italy in 2021, about 30 billion came from Russia.
Privileged after the 1973 petroleum shock, the gas was initially seen, with nuclear power, as the best way to do not depend on the Gulf’s pettomonarchies alone. But Italy quickly turned the back to the atom, abandoning the civilian nuclear in 1987, in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster, and rejecting again by referendum, in 2011, the opening of new power plants. It is therefore forced to import a little more than 10% of its electricity (largely from French nuclear power plants), which shows that, in the immediate future, the Italian situation is extremely fragile.
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