Gas pipelines, hydrocarbon production, electricity grids: now we can start again. Large infrastructures in the strategic energy sector, blocked (or severely delayed) by local vetoes for many years, are back under the exclusive competence of the State. The end of regional competences, as they had so far been regulated by Title V of the Constitution, is one of the novelties of the Senate reform approved on Wednesday 13 October at Palazzo Madama. And this time it's really changing after the attempts, more timid and less decisive, carried out with the Sblocca Italia.
Which infrastructures will therefore be able to restart? There is no shortage of examples: they range from the development projects of the Valdagri oil fields in Basilicata, to various research projects in Piedmont as well as in the Marches, Puglia and Abruzzo. But other important interventions such as the National Nuclear Waste Repository or the Adriatic backbone of the Snam gas pipeline and perhaps receive an acceleration of other large operations such as the valorisation of the Argo and Cassiopea off-shore gas fields in Sicily, linked to the agreement on the reconversion of the Gela refinery that Eni has closed (at stake there are 2,2 billion investments between 2015 and 2018, of which 1,8 billion concentrated on eight wells and a new platform in addition to the connecting gas pipelines, all about twenty kilometers from the coast, in the waters between Gela and Licata ).
Projects that have been waiting since 1998, and even earlier. Which are advancing, in the Eni-Gela case, but which will now be able to follow a less bumpy path. Naturally, it will take another year before arriving at the constitutional referendum, scheduled for autumn 2016. And then a passage to the Consulta. But at the beginning of 2017 the reform will be a reality and those big groups that had left Italy – like Bg, ExxonMobil, Chevron – are already putting themselves to the window, interested in the upcoming news and ready to position themselves at the right time.
A return of interest that has not escaped the Ministry of Development and the most attentive observers and which brings attention back to our country which, let us remember, offers an exceptional logistic platform in the center of the Mediterranean. To get an idea of the values at stake, the Ministry of Development has calculated, out of about 40 stalled projects, investments of 15 billion in the production of hydrocarbons alone and an employment potential of 25.000 people in four to six years.
What does the constitutional reform foresee? Meanwhile, the “national production, transport and distribution of energy” returns to the exclusive competence of the State (article 31) as well as “strategic infrastructures and large transport and navigation networks of national interest and related safety standards; civilian ports and airports of national and international interest". Not only that, but "on a proposal from the Government, the law of the State can intervene in matters not reserved to exclusive legislation when required by the protection of the legal or economic unity of the Republic, or the protection of the national interest". It's a state supremacy clause which will make it possible to bypass the critical issues, when the exclusive competences are regional, if the common interest is at stake.
At the moment, Basilicata does not release the agreements on the increase in the production of oil in Valdagri (waiting to authorize the development project stopped since '98). In Sulmona, in Abruzzo, the Adriatic backbone of the Snam pipeline for local protests and the refusal of the Region to grant the agreement. This is a project closely linked to the Tap, the gas pipeline that lands in Puglia and will import gas from Azerbaijan, as part of a 3,1 billion investment package that Snam is planning to better serve the North and to export gas in Europe. Delays, blocks, exhausting tug of war with the Regions. The destiny of all these projects (and of those listed above) is to restart with the new constitutional amendment that brings certainty and clear references.
