Does oilman Ammaturo’s Espresso undermine Azerbaijan?
L'Espresso, the weekly magazine published by the Ammaturos, attacks Azerbaijan for the undemocratic elections and criticizes the Italian deputies who held them. The Central Asian country is fundamental for Italian oil and gas supplies: precisely the sector in which the new editors of the weekly L'Espresso operate…
L' Espresso , a weekly magazine directed by Enrico Bellavia and published by the Ammaturo family, the oil business family that controls the energy company Ludoil Energy, criticized the positions of the three Italian deputies invited by Azerbaijan to monitor the presidential elections in February: namely Salvatore Caiata and Andrea Di Giuseppe of Fratelli d'Italia, and Naike Gruppioni of Italia Viva.
HOW THE ELECTIONS REALLY WENT IN AZERBAIJAN
The elections, called in advance after the recovery of Nagorno-Karabakh from Armenia , were won by incumbent President Ilham Aliyev, in power since 2003, with over 90 percent of the vote.
However, observers from the OSCE, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, said they had "serious doubts" about the legitimacy of the process, underlining a lack of attention to combating fraud and pointing out that none of the other six candidates were really an opponent of Aliyev. The two main opposition parties boycotted the vote, while journalists critical of the presidency and corruption were jailed.
THE JUDGMENT OF GRUPPONI, GIUSEPPE AND CAIATA
In short, the elections in Azerbaijan do not appear to have been free, fair or transparent. Nonetheless, Naike Grupponi – one of the three Italian deputies invited by the Baku government – declared that she was "impressed by the enthusiasm and spirit of the Azerbaijani people who participated in the vote […]. I wish voters in other countries of the world were as interested in elections as those in Azerbaijan." Di Giuseppe, as reported by L'Espresso , exalted youth participation, which is important "in a democratic process". Caiata instead praised the "transparency".
THE IMPORTANCE OF AZERBAIJAN FOR ITALY
Azerbaijan is an important producer of oil and gas (the business sector of Ammaturo, publishers of Espresso ) and its energy resources are fundamental to the European Union's plans to detach itself from Russian hydrocarbons.
Azerbaijan is also crucial for Italian supplies of fossil fuels: in 2023 it was our largest supplier of crude oil ( followed by Libya and the United States) and the second largest supplier of natural gas (after Algeria). Azerbaijani gas reaches Italy through the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline, or TAP: the pipeline has a capacity of 10 billion cubic meters per year but its expansion is planned.
On March 1, the Minister of the Environment, Gilberto Pichetto (Forza Italia), guest in Baku for the meeting of the Southern Gas Corridor council, recalled that from its entry into operation (i.e. from 2020) to today, Italy has imported 26 billion cubic meters of gas through TAP.
“In 2023, with 10 billion cubic meters, TAP was the second supply route for us,” said Pichetto. “To strengthen the TAP, Italy, Greece and Albania have defined a process to increase the capacity of the gas pipeline which, from 2026, will grow by 1.2 billion cubic metres, reaching 11.2 billion m3/year, with the aim of a maximum capacity of 20 billion cubic meters per year”.
OTHER ECONOMIC AGREEMENTS
In the article, L'Espresso underlines the imbalance in the trade balance towards Azerbaijan: Italy exports goods to the country for 400 million euros and imports for approximately 12 billion. The weekly then goes on to highlight the sale of weapons – to be precise, a C27J Spartan aircraft made by Leonardo, last June – to a country that is barely democratic but has good political and economic relations with Russia.
Beyond the military sector, about a year ago Ansaldo Energia, an energy plant company controlled by Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, signed a contract worth more than 160 million euros with Azerenerji, Azerbaijan's largest electricity producer.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/energia/l-espresso-osservatori-elezioni-azerbaigian/ on Fri, 08 Mar 2024 13:24:18 +0000.