The code is encrypted: TRA-A-12 GALSI pipeline . To find the secret dossier, the armored cabinets of the European Agency for Cooperation between Energy Regulators must be opened. The European Parliament has relocated it to none other than Ljubljana, in the heart of Slovenia. It is here that Europe's energy plans, contingent and strategic ones, must be examined by those who deal with the great energy network of the West. A web of pipes and cables, electric and gas transmission, tight and sometimes wider meshes. The mission is to plan energy in the countries of the Union. In the Agency's interactive map, the connection between systems and networks is the real objective of the European strategy.
Hot dossier
The folder of the Algeria-Sardinia-Europe methane pipeline, the second line of methane supply only planned and designed by the Maghreb countries towards the old continent, is a hot dossier. If only for the change of pace of history impressed with the impetuousness of a war on the threshold of the state borders. On February 24th, out of the blue, the energy map was razed to the ground with a lightning fast action and without appeal. When Vladimir Putin, at 3.31 that night, decided to go and take Ukraine, with the shock force of a long-planned war, those energy maps of Europe became waste paper in an instant. A reversal of the horizon that forces Europe and the States, Italy first, to rewrite scenarios and re-establish priorities. One thing is certain, at any moment Europe could lack an energy supply capable of blocking the entire Western economy. From Germany to the Bel Paese, the impact of those closed taps on the Ukrainian border would mean a devastating red light. Thinking of recovering that gas with floating roundabouts, with ships loaded with gas from the United States, to supply no less than 200 million Europeans would mean bringing production and the economy to its knees. It is clear that a not insignificant change of horizon is needed. The ecological transition, planned with wind turbines and photovoltaic panels to be placed in Sardinia, not only does not hold up but is not exactly sustainable in the times and quantities of energy required.
Pnrr already old
We must take note, albeit with ill-concealed displeasure of the predators of the Sardinian sea, that the strategy must necessarily change. The energy plan behind the PNRR became old in the blink of an eye. Choosing to persist on the path traced before the conflict, rather than adjusting times and strategies, means putting Europe and Italy offside. The new energy challenge is all in the ability to urgently reorient the new strategic energy supply and governance agenda. It is for this reason that that dossier on the connecting pipeline between Algeria, Sardinia and Europe, which resurfaced in Slovenia, reveals new and surprising details.
Close topicality
With a first unknown element in Sardinia and beyond that brings that project back to the close relevance of these dramatic days: the European body of the network of gas transmission system operators (ENTSOG) had indicated in its plan the construction of the Algeria gas pipeline -Sardinia-Europe starting in 2020 to be completed by 2022, including commissioning. The details of the project are all contained in ENTSOG's "Ten-year network development plan 2020" which recalls how in 2010 the European Commission had allocated a grant of 120 million euros from the European Energy Recovery Program to that strategic infrastructure. The strategic plan of the community body also states that the "future availability of new funds from the European Commission would be a key issue for the success of the project." The papers in the dossier highlight the strategic role of the work in the European context, even before the disastrous war in Ukraine.
The silence on the stop
The notes in the margins of the documents in our possession, however, show that the European body does not have a real reason for stopping the infrastructure. The agenda of that work, updated in every detail, gives a glimpse of a bitter observation put in black and white: even if the expected completion of the work is scheduled for 2022, no updates have been communicated to the Agency. That is to say, those who were supposed to do it did not. The number two of the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, Paolo Gentiloni, is familiar with the dossier.
Check Gentiloni
From the pile of documents emerges a note that we report in full: "In 2015 a new partnership was agreed between the Algerian Minister of Foreign Affairs Ramatane Lamamra and the Italian Paolo Gentiloni to continue the development of the GALSI pipeline". Perhaps it was that partnership signed by Gentiloni, who later became prime minister, that reopened the methane pipeline chapter in the Brussels offices. It is clear that the current scenario is destined to change in strategic and radical terms, at least for the next twenty years, the energy geopolitics in Europe and in the Mediterranean. From this point of view, the only infrastructure that can be immediately set up is the Galsi, which could vary only in two possible new needs, that of Europe for an increase in volumes and Sardinia to have a modern backbone, the first in Europe, built with hydrogen-ready pipelines, that is, already ready for the transport of the cleanest and most innovative energy of the future, hydrogen.
Two years for the opera
In the European plans of the Network Agency, a two-year deadline is foreseen to build the infrastructure that has become strategic in an instant, capable of accompanying Italy, Europe and above all Sardinia to a truly sustainable ecological transition that does not throttle , as was already happening, citizens and businesses. It is evident that if Europe and the Italian State do not pursue this project with the necessary urgency, making up for errors and the time seriously lost in the past, it will mean that once again the energy lobbies, which have always been a real obstacle to the Galsi project, will win. Eni argued that bringing ten billion cubic meters of methane a year with the gas pipeline from Algeria through Sardinia meant creating an energy bubble.
Lobby & speculation
The facts, the history and the cost of energy, even before the Russian war itself, had brought out something else. The operators of the pipelines prefer the greed of speculative prices and some increase in pressure in the existing pipelines in order not to allow serious and strategic solutions. It is a question of understanding how much Italian and European institutions are in check by the energy lobbies. In times of war, one should have the audacity to pursue collective interests and not those of the gold balance sheets of state-owned companies and beyond.
