As Prime Minister Meloni visits Tripoli, Italy and Libya sign an $8 billion gas deal

The main topics of discussion for Italy and the European Union during the prime minister’s visit to Libya on Saturday were energy and migration. The two oil companies signed a gas agreement worth $8 billion during the visit, the largest single investment in Libya’s energy sector in more than 20 years.

Premier Giorgia Meloni, who has been in office for three months, travelled to Libya this week. In light of Moscow’s conflict with Ukraine, she is attempting to obtain additional natural gas supplies to replace Russian energy. She earlier travelled to Algeria, Italy’s primary natural gas supplier, where she signed a number of memoranda.

Meloni, the Italian foreign minister Antonio Tajani, and the interior minister Matteo Piantedosi arrived at the Mitiga airport, the sole operational airport in Tripoli, Libya, amid heavy security, according to her office. She spoke with Mohamed Younis Menfi, the chairman of Libya’s ceremonial presidential council, and Abdel Hamid Dbeibah, the head of one of the country’s competing governments.

Meloni reiterated her words from Algeria during a roundtable with Dbeibah, stating that while Italy wants to raise its presence in the area, it does not seek a “predatory” position; rather, it wants to aid African countries in “growing and becoming wealthy.”

Claudio Descalzi, the CEO of Italy’s state-run energy giant ENI, travelled there and inked an $8 billion agreement for the development of two offshore gas resources in Libya with the National Oil Corporation. Farhat Bengdara, the chairman of the NOC, also signed.

The agreement calls for the development of two offshore fields in Block NC-41, north of Libya. According to ENI, gas production is expected to begin in 2026 and increase to 750 million cubic feet per day.

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The arrangement, according to Meloni, who was there for the signing ceremony, will aid in Europe’s security of supply for energy.

“Libya is undoubtedly a crucial economic partner for us,” Meloni declared.

Agreements can exacerbate the strain.

Similar to other oil and military agreements between Tripoli and Ankara, Saturday’s agreement is likely to widen the chasm between the opposing Libyan authorities in the east and west. It has already made divisions in the Dbeibah government public.

Without being present at the signing, oil minister Mohamed Aoun blasted the agreement on local television, calling it “illegal” and asserting that the NOC failed to confer with his department.

During his conference, Bengdara did not respond to Aoun’s criticism but stated that people who disagreed with the contract could go to court to contest it.

Despite continuous security concerns, ENI has continued to operate in Libya, producing gas mostly for the domestic market. Before Libya’s fall in 2011, Libya delivered 8 billion cubic metres of water annually to Italy via the Greenstream pipeline, but just 2.63 billion cubic metres did so last year.

According to Matteo Villa of the Milan-based ISPI research tank, instability raised domestic demand while underinvestment hindered Libya’s gas exports overseas. According to Villa, new contracts “are crucial in terms of image.”

Additionally, due to Moscow’s aggression towards Ukraine, Italy has taken steps to lessen its reliance on Russian natural gas. Italy cut its imports by two-thirds, to 11 billion cubic metres, last year.

Since the country’s attempt to hold presidential and parliamentary elections in December 2021 failed, Meloni is the highest-ranking European official to travel to oil-rich Libya. Dbeibah refused to resign, which led Libya’s east-based parliament to instal an alternative administration.

For the past ten years, Libya has been ruled by two rival governments, one in the east and the other in Tripoli, in the west.Following the 2011 NATO-backed rebellion that escalated into a civil war and overthrew and eventually murdered long-time dictatorial leader Moammar Gadhafi, the nation fell into turmoil.

Piantedosi’s attendance during the visit indicated that Meloni’s trip’s main issue was migration. The government’s campaign against charity rescue boats operating off the coast of Libya has been led by the interior minister, who at first barred the boats from entering ports and more recently assigned locations in northern Italy that required days of travel.

boats on patrol for migrants

Dbeibah announced that Italy would give five “fully equipped” boats to Libya’s coast guard to help stop the flow of migrants toward the European coastlines at a joint news conference with Meloni later on Saturday.

The provision of the patrol boats by Italy has been challenged by Alarm Phone, an activist group that assists in bringing rescuers to drowning migrants at sea.

Despite the fact that this is nothing new, the group warned in an email to The Associated Press. This would definitely result in more individuals being kidnapped at sea and forced to go back to the locations they were trying to flee.

Meloni needs to demonstrate “some type of step-up, relative to her predecessor, in terms of migration and energy policy in Libya,” according to Jalel Harchaoui, a Libya expert and associate scholar at the Royal United Services Institute.

However, he added, “it will be challenging to improve upon Rome’s current western Libya methods, which have been chugging along.”

The country of North Africa has developed into a centre for Middle Eastern and African immigrants heading to Europe. Every year, Italy gets tens of thousands of visitors.