Chief Executive Officer and General Manager, Eni
LNG will lead the energy transition, says Eni's CEO
Claudio Descalzi, CEO of Eni, joins CNBC's JP Ong from Energy Asia 2025 in Kuala Lumpur to discuss Eni's energy transition goals and strategies.
About Claudio Descalzi
Claudio Descalzi, CEO of Eni, appeared before the Productive Activities Commission in Rome on July 16, 2026, to discuss the state of the energy market in Italy and Europe. During the hearing, Descalzi stated that a race is underway involving artificial intelligence, hyperscale data centers, critical minerals, and their refining, which he said requires a large amount of energy. He asserted that only two participants are in this race, the United States and China, and that "no one else" is involved. Descalzi also criticized the European Commission, saying that Europe has "done everything to destroy chemistry" and that the Commission is effectively telling companies to leave Europe. He stated that Eni has not received any support or contributions from the EU and that Europe has "continued to fight" the company. The hearing covered topics including energy security, the development of the Brindisi hub, and prospects for nuclear energy and hydrogen in Italy, particularly in relation to Africa.
Transcript (5 segments)
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Claudio Descalzi0:00
I think the best performer in terms of discovery. We discovered more than 16 billion of resources, billion of oil equivalent resources, a huge amount. Then you have to develop, so capital allocation, but at the same time we are investing a lot on the transition. So climate change. This allows us to develop these resources because we put together our production and production operators, as I said, this creates the bankability to develop these resources. So from our side, we created a model that allows us, through independent financing, to develop our upstream resources with another big actor. So that is the value. Clearly it's important for us, it's even more important for Indonesia and Malaysia because they can get access to gas in a region that needs gas, because it's a region where the consumption for power, for electricity, using coal is the highest, more than 60%. So replacing coal is important, and you have the gas to replace coal with reduced emissions. So it's more than a win-win. For us it's the possibility to develop the resources that we discovered.
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Interviewer1:40
And I'm glad that you brought up the source of discovery because you can argue that Eni has been very, very active and busy in the last couple of months because it's not just this part of the world. You're talking about projects in Mozambique. I believe there's another one in Argentina as well. What's driving, I guess, the optimism that's behind this expansive energy coming from Eni in the last couple of months?
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Claudio Descalzi2:01
So you know, we discover a lot of resources, and when there is a situation like I described in the last 12 years, we need to diversify our business. So when I talk about diversification, I talk about geographical diversification but also technological diversification and different kind of geographies and technology. Like you touched the point of Mozambique, the LNG offshore for example, that is the second project that we are going to sanction in Mozambique. Mozambique, we discovered a huge amount of reserves, and Argentina the same, huge amount of reserves, different kind. We talk about shale gas in this case, but now Argentina opened up for the export of LNG. So we see LNG as a future. We see gas as a future. We see gas as, I think, the other big actor of the transition because it's a low CO2 content respect to coal or other fossil fuels. So diversification pushed us to move like that in different parts of the world, but also because we discover a lot of resources and we go through a development, because the world needs energy, the new hyperscale data centers, the growing populations. And you have to look at the demand. You have to look at, clearly, you have to decarbonize your production. So we are also very active in the decarbonization through CCS, biofuels, renewables. We constituted the company and we are growing our renewables. So you have to diversify, you have to take care about the needs, and you have to take care also to be able to produce clean products in a very effective way and go to the areas where they need energy because they are growing.
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Interviewer4:24
And just very quickly, if there was one risk that you're watching out for that might perhaps pose challenges to your strategy at the moment, what do you think is the biggest risk right now that you might have to be wary of?
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Claudio Descalzi4:40
Risk. I think that the risk is always, clearly we have something that we cannot control: geopolitics. That is a risk. I think that also from that point of view I'm optimistic because I think that our leaders in the world, at the end, they understand what is better for the population, and war is not good for the population. So from different point of view, I think that sooner or later they're going to understand that we have to settle down and create a peaceful situation for the wealth of everybody. So that is not in our hand. The other risk is that we are not effective, we lose time, we are not able to talk with the institution to find the right setup for the new policy to facilitate. So everything is in our hands. So the only risk is that we are not able to do our job in the correct way.