Since the autumn of 2020, household spending on natural gas under the protection regime has risen by 250%, net of transport costs, system charges and taxes. The prices photographed by the sector authority (Arera) have been showing non-stop increases for eighteen months, if the recent fluctuations are excluded, to the point of creating an increasingly urgent dilemma for the government. Is it possible to continue subsidizing part of the increases in the bill every quarter, in the hope that international prices will finally fall? Or do we need to anticipate events, imagining that the price of natural gas for Italian families and businesses does not fall before 2023?
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No new drilling
Hence a project which for now is not the subject of decisions already made, but is actively being studied. The basic idea is simple and, on paper, relatively little controversial: there is the possibility of increasing the extraction of gas from Italian fields, without new drilling, while at the same time reducing purchases from abroad in order to keep the volume of consumption constant. The solicitation starts from the industrial sectors with the highest energy consumption – cement, steel, ceramics – but in recent weeks it is being seriously considered by the government. Over the past two decades the share of domestic production to meet natural gas needs plummeted. The Italian fields insured just under 20 billion cubic meters per year at the beginning of the century, then their contribution dropped below thirteen billion in 2004 and stopped at four billion cubic meters last year. (according to data from the Ministry of Economic Development). In the meantime, the use of imported natural gas has only increased, even if the country’s consumption has dropped a little. This year Italy will buy around 70 billion cubic meters from abroad (from Russia, Algeria, Norway, Holland, Libya and Qatar and Azerbaijan), volumes 13% higher than in 2003.
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From 4 to 9 billion cubic meters per year
The project discussed in this phase does not envisage subverting the assets. The quantities of gas burned in Italy would remain unchanged, in order to allow the country to respect the Paris agreements. No new drilling would be necessary on the national territory. Rather, the possibility is being studied of more effectively exploiting the already active fields, in order to double the national quota from just over four to about nine billion cubic meters per year.. The impact on prices would be downward, because the new offer of national origin would allow to reduce market tensions. And the effect on the environment would be positive, because the CO2 emissions produced in the journeys of thousands of kilometers from imported raw materials would be reduced.
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