Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has signed a gas deal worth billions on a visit to Libya. The plan is for Italian and Libyan energy giants to jointly develop two offshore gas fields.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni visited Tripoli on Saturday for talks with the internationally-recognized government in the Libyan capital.
She became the first Western leader to visit the government in Libya since it missed its late 2021 target to hold national elections amid political turmoil in the country.
Major offshore gas deal signed
During the visit, the two countries’ oil companies signed a gas deal worth around $8 billion (roughly €7.5 billion), calling it the largest single investment in Libya’s energy sector in more than two decades.
Italy’s ENI and the Libyan National Oil Corporation (NOC) plan to cooperate on the construction of two offshore gas fields off Libya’s northern coast. ENI said in a statement that output would begin in 2026 and reach a plateau of 750 million cubic feet per day.
ENI CEO Claudio Descalzi and NOC chairman Farhat Begdara signed the deal at a ceremony also attended by Meloni and the head of Libya’s UN-brokered but contested national unity government, Abdel Hamid Dbeibah.
“This agreement will enable important investments in Libya’s energy sector, contributing to local development and job creation while strengthening ENI’s role as a leading operator in the country,” Descalzi said.
Meloni called the deal “significant and historic,” saying “Libya is clearly for us a strategic economic partner.”
Like several other European countries, Italy has been looking for alternative sources of gas and oil, having relied in the past on purchases from Russia until the sanctions following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Meloni was also in Algeria, penning similar gas deals, earlier in the week.
Libyan oil minister questions the deal
But Saturday’s deal showed rifts in the rival Libyan administrations in the east and west, as had previous oil deals between Tripoli and Ankara.
So this puts Italy in a very similar situation to Turkey.
The rival government in the east considers the Tripoli government illegitimate and by extension the commercial deals it strikes with foreign states as well.
For most of the past decade, rival governments in Tripoli and in the east of the country have been vying for control since the NATO-backed uprising that ousted dictator Moammar Gadhafi.
Security tight, government’s grip looser
Meloni landed at Mitiga airport, the only functioning airport in Tripoli at present, amid tight security. Her foreign and interior ministers, Antonio Tajani and Matteo Piantedosi, accompanied her.
She met with the leader of the UN-brokered government Dbeiba and held talks with Mohamed Younis Menfi, who chairs Libya’s ceremonial presidential council.
Echoing comments she had made in Algeria, Meloni said that while Italy wanted to increase its presence in the region, it was not seeking a “predatory” role but rather wanted to help African nations “grow and become richer.”
Italy is acting in a similar manner to Russia in this regard.
High-ranking diplomatic visits to Africa have been in sharp focus recently, not least as Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov made a pair of tours of the continent and as the US then sent a delegation of its own, with President Joe Biden planning to visit later.
