Egypt to be key LNG contributor to Italy – Eni CEO

Egypt will be one of the key contributors of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Italy in the future, said CEO of energy giant Eni on Thursday.

“Algeria right now has doubled its gas flows to Italy compared to the past,” Claudio Descalzi said at a business conference. “Then we have other contributions, such as that of Norway. In the future we will also have contributions from Egypt, Nigeria, Angola and Congo via LNG.”

Descalzi urged Italy to raise its LNG import capacity in 2023, stating that the country needs more LNG terminals in order to obtain more fuel from various countries. Italy has already secured more gas imports from Algeria and Norway to make up for a decline in supply from Russia.

Descalzi said the state-controlled group, which last year imported about 21 billion cubic metres of gas from Russia out of a total of 29 bcm imported by Italy, will replace little more than 50 percent of Moscow’s supplies starting from this winter.

Eni will have completely replaced Russian gas by the winter of 2024–2025, he concluded.