There is more than 90 billion cubic meters of methane at the bottom of the Italian sea. It can reach 120-130 billion, if we consider the potential resources of Gas Not yet confirmed. But they had been waiting there for years. It’s definitely been two and a half years since the moratorium on pending permits and perks began awaiting Pitesai wanted by M5s. There are dead plants in the high Adriatic, in Emilia Romagna, off the coasts of Ravenna and Comacchio. And again: in market Off San Benedetto del Tronto and Alba Adriatica, front suspension Apulia And strong potential along the coasts Sicily. There is a case of Argo Cassiopeia in the Gela region. Here Eni-Med aims in a joint venture with Edison to invest up to 1.8 billion for gas exploitation in the Sicily Channel, through 4 submarine wells connected to a processing plant to be built in the vicinity of the refinery planted in Gela.

Reach the finish line

Now the “Sustainable Energy Transition Plan for Qualified Areas”, the map of potential activities, must have reached the target of approval by local authorities. But in the meantime, business investments have almost disappeared. However, it will take years to restart the car.
At least one year to reopen taps that are already available but temporarily closed. So much to go fishing in a real gold mine. It’s like sitting on a treasure worth at least 150 billion euros, considering the price of a cubic meter of gas, while letting others benefit. Croatia and Montenegro, for example, or Albania and Greece, which suck relentlessly from the same sediments on the sea floor, but do so from their own straw, on the other side of the Adriatic.

Today out of 120-130 billion cubic meters, Italy extracts only 3-4 per year. But she consumes more than 70. What she lacks she buys from abroad, from Russia, Qatar, Algeria, Norway and even the United States. Believing that transporting all that gas still has a huge impact on the environment.
So Italy can produce at home at a cost of 5 cents and even resell part of it and earn a lot. Instead, they are forced to buy at the price decided by the market. Yesterday a cubic meter of gas reached 140 cents. Even worse, methane has also caused electricity prices to drop, by more than 300 per megawatt-hour. The hope for the next few months is that tensions between Russia and Ukraine will subside. Tensions that today lead to fear of interruptions in gas pipeline flows, in a period when Europe is consuming stocks at a record pace. Perhaps Germany’s approval could also access NorthStrean 2, the new gas pipeline connecting Russia to Germany through the Baltic Sea, thus bypassing Ukraine. There are no requirements and there are still doubts about safety, as they say at the moment from Berlin.
However, Prime Minister Draghi realized there was no time to lose: a structural plan to save a bill had to be implemented to protect Italy from an energy crisis that could be longer than expected. Shared purchase and storage In Europe, the transformation of the pricing mechanism, along with a green tax for energy companies is part of the task. Italy must be able to control its own gas fields.

Stops and turns

The drilling moratorium that began in February 2019 has put about 150 permits on hold: 73 research permits are already in force and another 79 are pending. Plus 5 more orders to “excavate”, which always means “to explore the underground”, but without the use of drilling machines. After already months, in April. It was understood that the air was changing when the environmental green light arrived for the 10 national methane exploitation projects and oil fields hidden in the subsoil of the Emilian Land (the Po Valley and Siam companies) and under the Adriatic Sea floor (the Po Valley and the Eni) and the Strait of Sicily (Eni). In all, the various projects expect to drill more than 20 new wells. 2022 is set to be the turning point year. Because the push to extract domestic gas is the path that Draghi and Singolani were determined to follow,