Gas and expensive energy, Descalzi: “Prices are falling, the system is adapting. The hardest winter will be in 2023/24 “

Everyone is looking at the winter that is coming but “the hardest winter will be that of 2023/24” if Italy does not strengthen its infrastructures. “We need more storage capacity, we need more regasifiers”. Speaking like this is Eni’s CEO Claudio Descalzi. Which then explains better why: “We do not have national production, we have 1/3 of the regasifiers we need and we need to increase the storage capacity”, explains Descalzi, recalling that Eni cannot do everything alone.
The price goes down
Meanwhile, the price of gas is falling. But how come? There is a clear reason, emphasizes the CEO of Eni: “The system (energy, ed) is adapting” between increased storage, reduced consumption and more efficiencies. Descalzi explains in simple words why the price of gas is now falling. Russian gas represented the vast majority of the supply, “now it is at 9%, the system has replaced it by taking it elsewhere, through the regasifiers: Algeria has increased the supply by 3 times, Norway and the US have also increased them , there has never been a time when demand was greater than supply. In Italy the demand is 150 million cubic meters per day and the supply of 200 million but also in Europe, if the demand is 650 million cubic meters, the supply is 1 billion “, recalls Descalzi interviewed during the event of Cultura Italiae, Seeds 2022.
Prices then rose “due to speculation, because all this was not known”. The decrease in prices also weighs on the decrease in consumption which, Descalzi recalls, “is seasonal: from September until the beginning of November the air conditioners are switched off and there is still no heating”. Last but not least, the energy mix is ​​also changing, “the use of petroleum products, coal, has started again.”
Europe is not united
Europe on gas, “cannot move together, there are divergent interests”. The CEO of Eni thus observes the process of the discussion on the gas price cap that is taking place in Brussels. “In Europe there has been no talk of energy for 30 years, when they all become experts in 5 minutes it is difficult to find a solution”, Eni’s CEO condenses the thought into a joke. “Europe is not a state, there are different cultures, different mixes of energy, even different riches, when it comes to solidarity it is a photograph”, he adds.