Following the signing of a new agreement between Algerian national oil company Sonatrach and Italian energy company Eni, Algeria will increase its natural gas supply to Italy in 2022.
Indeed, this new agreement initialed by Toufik Hakkar, CEO of Sonatrach and Claudio Descalzi, CEO of Eni, in the presence of HE President Abdelmadjid Tebboune of Algeria and HE Prime Minister Mario Draghi of Italy in the Algerian capital, Algiers, is an opportunity for Eni to use Sonatrach's TransMed/Enrico Mattei pipeline to expand gas supply to 9 billion cubic meters (bcm) per year by 2023-24.
Algeria and Italy had already started negotiations to increase their energy relations in early February 2021.
However, due to growing tensions between Europe and Russia, Italy's main energy supplier, discussions to strengthen energy cooperation were rushed, resulting in the signing of the agreement with the letter of intent to consolidate existing partnerships.
Escalzi believes that "today is a special day for relations between Italy and Algeria, in particular for Eni and Sonatrach ».
Eni, who currently produced 100 barrels of oil equivalent in Algeria, has also committed to increasing its exploration and production activities in this North African country and to investing in the areas of renewable energy, hydrogen, carbon capture, storage and use and biorefining.
The aim is to improve Algeria's energy landscape while progressing towards the company's goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050.
It should be noted that in 2021, Algeria increased its gas exports to Europe to around 53 billion m3 compared to 40 billion m3 in 2020. This was made possible thanks to strong demand from Europe.
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