The new technologies for oil and gas extraction can decrease our energy dependance from Middle east countries. The confirmation arrives from Eni's president, Gianmaria Gros-Pietro: "New technologies enable oil extraction from depths that were unthinkable up to a few years ago, we can reach 3 thousand meters below the sea. Also, the ability to find new reservoirs, localizing them accurately and injecting gas, water or in the future carbon dioxide in old and previously exploited reservoirs we can increase the pressure and thus carry on exploiting it ".Also Eni is working at a technology which can transform oil residues in light products. And in gas, Eni aims at a new technology which will be able to transform, in loco, the extracted gas into liquid fuel. All this will enable to, according to Gros-Pietro, "relieve the three current bonds: propduict availability, security in supplies and energy costs".
News are as positive as ever, seeing as on the nuclear front things are not going as well. "Nuclear energy will not be a feasible solution before 20-30 years", as said by Francesco Zofrea, president of EniTecnologie, taking part at the convention on the energy scenarios for the 21st century. This standstill point in research has blocked the process of technological innovation of the sector.
On the conditions of the Italian energy system there was an intervention from the Procutive Activities Commission of the Chamber with a document, compiled at the end of the research investigation on the situation and on the prospects of the energy sector, which, as well as diagnosing the system's 'pathologies', solicits the adoption of a "new energy policy" that will rest upon a "corrective action by public parties. In the absence of which - it is warned in the document - it is realistic to expect a worsening of things in the light of current trends". A corrective action which, as it is stressed by the Productive Activities Commission, "will have to be accompanied by an adequate policy and rationalization of tax drawings which today weigh upon producing companies, with distorting effects on the market, as with the carbon tax, and on the end consumers, particularly in the gas sector ".
May.2002
Eni
Ministry of productive activities
