TRIPOLI: Italian oil group Eni is aiming to restart gas exports from Libya to Italy through its Greenstream pipeline by October or November, its chief executive told Reuters on Monday.
"The first thing we want to do is to restart immediately the export of gas from Libya to Italy through the Greenstream, the pipeline which links Libya to Sicily," Paolo Scaroni told Reuters during a visit to Libyan capital Tripoli.
Asked when exports might resume, he said: "It’s not easy to give an estimate because we have not yet visited all the sites that are producing gas but we would love to do it before the winter, so say October-November sometime."
Libya provides about 12 percent of Italy’s gas needs. One worry is that if supplies from Algeria and Russia are in any way interrupted, imports into Italy in the winter months could be tight.
Exports of Libyan gas to Italy through the Greenstream pipeline were suspended when civil war broke out.
On the resumption of gas exports, Scaroni added: "It’s hard to tell the date, but we set this target, which is a reasonable target in particular because we would like to have it for the winter season."
He added that oil production would be a less urgent priority for the firm than gas.
"We produce a lot of oil, but this is less urgent. Less urgent because, okay, we want to do it, but it doesn’t have the kind of urgency that does gas, which has limited sources of supply, while oil is all over the world."
The 520-km Greenstream pipeline that runs from Mellitah to Sicily, and which takes gas from Libya’s Wafa field, has a capacity of around 8 billion cubic meters.
State-controlled Eni is Libya’s biggest foreign oil operator.
"We are by far the biggest player in Libya, both in oil and in gas, so I came here with the idea of ‘back to normal.’ My basic idea is I want to bring back our presence here to normality," Scaroni said.
