Africa-Press – Angola. The Italian Prime Minister was due to visit Angola tomorrow, on a trip that would aim to diversify gas imports and reduce Russia’s energy dependence, but the visit was canceled because Mario Draghi is infected with Covid-19, reported Monday. , the agency Lusa.
As announced this Monday, the services of the Italian Prime Minister, Draghi, 74, is infected with SARS-CoV-2, despite being asymptomatic.
Sources from the Italian Government, meanwhile, told EFE that instead of the Prime Minister, the Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Luigi di Maio, and of Ecological Transition, Roberto Cingolani, who is in charge of the portfolio, are traveling to Angola and the Republic of Congo. of Energy.
According to Lusa, Draghi was due to arrive in Luanda tomorrow, where he would meet with President João Lourenço, and the following day he would travel to Brazzaville, to also meet with the Congolese Head of State, Denis Sassou N’Guesso. A source from the Angolan Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that, despite this, diplomatic channels are dealing with the rescheduling of Mario Draghi’s visit to Angola.
The trip is part of the Italian government’s efforts to diversify energy imports, especially after the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, Italian executive sources explained to the Spanish news agency Efe.
Italy imports almost all the gas it consumes from abroad, about 90%, and approximately 40% comes from Russian territory. Last Monday, Draghi traveled to Algeria, Italy’s second gas supplier after Russia, and managed to sign an agreement to import more from that North African country.
Italy, linked to the outside by five pipelines, receives gas from Algeria via the Transmed pipeline, which starts in the Algerian Hassi R’Mel field, in the far north of the Sahara, crosses Tunisia and the sea and ends in Mazarra del Valley, in Sicilia.
Through this trans-Mediterranean channel, Italy received a total of 22,584 million cubic meters of gas in 2021 (in 1990, Italy imported half, 10,559 million cubic meters). However, the Algerian gas pipeline has an even greater capacity, of up to 27 billion cubic meters, declared, on March 22, in the Italian Parliament, the Minister of Ecological Transition, Roberto Cingolani, with energy responsibilities.
As part of this supply diversification strategy, the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Luigi Di Maio, has in recent months visited other countries, such as Azerbaijan, from where Italy received, in 2021, 7,214 million cubic meters of gas. , through a tube that crosses the Adriatic Sea, or Qatar, from where it imported 6,877 million.
A month and a half ago, Di Maio traveled to Congo, Angola and Mozambique and assured that “all these countries have been available to increase the supply” of hydrocarbons.
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