The Meloni government must bank on regasifiers for liquefied natural gas (LNG) to be energy independent as soon as possible, senior executive of energy giant Eni said.
The managing director of Ente Nazionale Idrocarburui (Eni), Claudio Descalzi, has repeatedly stressed the need to invest in more regasifiers to meet national needs.
“If we want to have energy security and have an overabundance of gas, we should get to have four more regasifiers,” he said, speaking at the Lombardia 2030 conference in Milan.
Descalzi made a comparison with Spain, which consumes 30 billion cubic metres and has a regasification capacity of 60 billion cubic metres.
As of today, Italy has a regasification capacity of 17 billion, plus another 10 billion from the regasifiers in Piombino and Ravenna. In an optimal situation, Descalzi explained, Italy would need four more regasifiers for full energy security.
Meloni relaunched, to this end, the Sorgenia and Iren project of a regasifier in Gioia Tauro (Calabria), “for which all it takes is an (act of government) declaring it to be a strategic work to get it going”. The plant has already been on land and authorised for ten years.
Potentially Gioia Tauro could process 12 to 16 billion cubic metres of LNG per year and would allow the Meloni government to start making southern Italy a “national and European energy hub”, as announced in the election programme of Fratelli d’Italia, in coalition with Forza Italia and Lega.
“With a little intelligence and resources well spent we could make the South (of Italy) the energy supply hub of Europe,” Giorgia Meloni stated during her speech when she took office in the government.
The Gioia Tauro regasifier could become an important facility for receiving LNG from new fields in the Mediterranean, but also from Nigeria and Eni’s plants in Mozambique and Congo. Now, Italy mainly imports from Qatar, Algeria and the United States.
In light of the war in Ukraine, Italy could be strategic for supplying Austria and Ukraine, using the existing gas pipelines that brought gas from Russia before the war. As well as supplying central Europe, by exploiting the existing LNG receiving facilities in Germany, thus saving a long and costly sea voyage.
(Federica Pascale | EURACTIV.it)
Source: euractiv.com
