The flight of international companies from Russia continues. Today a major announcement came from Italy with Eni (-0,8% on the Stock Exchange against a Ftse Mib that loses more than 2%) which announced the suspension of the stipulation of “new contracts relating to the supply of crude oil or petroleum products from Russia".
Eni's announcement
Translated, following the Shell example, the Italian oil giant will not sign new contracts for the purchase of Russian oil, but will only keep existing ones. Eni, which holds long-term contracts with the Russian major Gazprom, said it was monitoring closely international developments in the Ukrainian crisis. "Eni will fully respect every decision made by the European and Italian institutions," a spokesman said in response to a question about the future management of the contracts.
The company led by Claudio Descalzi added that it closely follows the events regarding the gas supply. The group has already announced its intention to divest its 50% stake in Blue Stream. The contracts with Rosneft were frozen after the sanctions imposed on Russia in 2014 for the invasion of Donbass.
Italy and the EU on energy
Eni's announcement follows the day in which the Prime Minister, Mario Draghi, presented some concrete measures on energy to try to reduce our country's dependence on Russian raw materials, but also to counter high prices.
During the question time in the Chamber, Draghi said that "VAT will be reduced to 5% for gas utilities and the government has earmarked 16 billion to support families due to higher gas bills”. Meanwhile he left today the Versailles summit where the 27 heads of state and government will discuss defense but also energy. "The current situation calls for a thorough reassessment of how we ensure the security of our energy supplies," but all agree on the need to "phase out our dependence on Russian gas, oil and coal imports."
The basis for doing this will be the plan presented by the European Commission a few days ago which plans to diversify suppliers, focus on the development of biogas and hydrogen and accelerate on renewables.
We recall that on March 8, US President Joe Biden announced the Russian oil and gas embargo (the US imports only 3% of its oil from Moscow), while British Prime Minister Boris Johnson intends to reduce imports to zero by the end of 2022.
