Italian energy giant COO says east Med oil fields can hurry transition LONDON: Italian energy giant Eni will support Europe’s push to divert from Russian oil and gas supplies by promoting liquefied national gas works in the Middle East and North Africa and banking on gas riches in the eastern Mediterranean. Speaking at the Gastech conference in Milan on Tuesday, the company’s Chief Operating Officer Guido Brusco said Eni “plans to fully replace Russian gas by 2025 helped by east Med fields.” Eni’s Deputy COO Cristian Signoretto added that the company would also invest up to $4.5 billion every year for the next three years to develop projects in several MENA locations, such as Qatar, Egypt and Algeria. Signoretto said that Eni is “fully committed to invest $4.5 billion per annum in the upstream to bring on line new gas supplies,” with a special focus on LNG projects in Africa and the Middle East. Energy news site OilPrice.com reported that Eni would double its Algerian gas imports to 18 billion cubic meters per year by 2024, adding that eastern Mediterranean operations would also be crucial to Eni’s strategy to divert from Russian energy supplies. Eni and French giant TotalEnergies announced in late August a major gas discovery in a well off the coast of Cyprus, which could have up to 2.5 trillion cubic feet of gas. The major find comes after Eni’s 2018 exploration activities in the same block unveiled another well, which is an extension of Egypt’s huge Zohr gas fields.