Mattei, Cefis and the mysteries of oil
"Italy in oil" by Giuseppe Oddo and Riccardo Antoniani read by Tullio Fazzolari
Italy is always hanging by a pipe. Whether it's gas or oil, it makes no difference. However, the result is that of depending almost totally on foreign countries for the supply of energy raw materials. And punctually you end up in trouble every time the tube fails or does not give the necessary quantity. It is happening today because of the Russian aggression against Ukraine. But it already happened ten years ago when Obama and Sarkozy decided to intervene in Libya and Italy lost its main source of supply. The consequence is that every time we have to look for a new supplier, hoping that it will last. Practically a torture of Sisyphus.
It was possible to escape this fate and have energy independence. Absolutely yes if the projects of Enrico Mattei, the greatest manager Italy has ever had, had been realized. But since Mattei's death on October 27, 1962, everything has gone differently. Giuseppe Oddo and Riccardo Antoniani with "Italy in oil" (Feltrinelli, 544 pages, 25 euros) reconstruct point by point about two decades of events on which doubts and unanswered questions have always remained. It took years for it to be established that the plane crash in which Mattei was the victim was due to sabotage. And as to who the instigators of the attack were, only hypotheses have been made. However, it did not escape the best minds that this was one of the darkest events in our history so much so that it attracted the attention of Pier Paolo Pasolini with "Petrolio" or of director Francesco Rosi with "The Mattei case".
Oddo and Antoniani finally give a complete picture that has as its starting point the great projects on which Mattei was working. It is enough to mention one, the most ambitious one, to realize what an enormous opportunity has been lost: a methane pipeline across the Mediterranean would have brought a huge and continuous flow of gas extracted in the Algerian Sahara to Europe. Italy and France would have reaped enormous benefits, but more generally all the member countries of the then European Economic Community. But of course the initiative annoyed those who, like the big oil companies, felt their supremacy on the energy market threatened.
With the death of Mattei, Eugenio Cefis arrives at the top of ENI and everything changes radically for the worse. The strategy of new initiatives is replaced by one of compromises to ensure peaceful coexistence with big companies like Exxon and Shell. Worse still, Mattei's capacity for international vision developed thanks to a great diplomatic work is replaced by that of Cefis more oriented towards meddling in the affairs of the Italian economy and politics. It was the era of the "master race" (as Eugenio Scalfari defined it), of the conquest of Montedison and the takeover of newspapers. Oddo and Antoniani tell the facts and all the characters using unpublished documents and testimonies. Reading "Italy in oil" one realizes that those events could only cause ruin. And leave the problem of energy dependence permanently unresolved.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/energia/mattei-cefis-e-i-misteri-sul-petrolio/ on Sat, 19 Nov 2022 07:33:12 +0000.