The dossier is armored in a few hands and safe safes. Few people know the "explosive" content of a report destined to change the scenario of the Mediterranean, both in terms of energy and strategic. For now, it is the intelligence and security officers, in practice the secret services, the military and economic ones. International confidential sources put black and white a chessboard of power that revolves around Sardinia , with the island, however, totally dominated and excluded from any benefit, indeed, exploited and abandoned to itself.
The American secret
This time the cable comes directly from the United States of America, to put the official stamp on it is the United States Geological Survey , which is the most impressive scientific agency of the American government. Scientists who have sifted through the whole world in search of underground energy resources and more, emerging or hidden in the most hidden depths of the sea. And you know, Americans never just look at home, partly because they want to have everything under control, partly because they prefer to manage the evolving economic scenarios themselves. This time they went as far as the most Sardinian Mediterranean, the western one, skirting Bosa, S'Archittu, Arborea, Piscinas, Masua, Carloforte and Teulada . In geological jargon they define it "Algero-Provençal Basin", in practice that basin enclosed between Algeria and the French region of Provence, the one, to be clear, that flanks Liguria. In between, of course, there are the Balearics, Corsica, which is not touched, but there is above all, and most of all, Sardinia, with its sea and its coasts. The American studio is well known to the Algerians, but the French and the Spanish are probably perfectly aware of it. In our house it is certain that the one who has always been the "real" Foreign Minister, the powerful CEO of Eni, knows him. And moreover, that the state-owned oil company is still the sole point of reference for relations with North Africa, it is clear from the words of Rosangela Mattei, the niece of Eni's founder, Enrico Mattei, a few days ago: " 'Africa they called our family offering new supplies. Minister Cingolani? He did not answer ". After all, it is nothing new that since the time of the founder of the "six-legged dog" nothing has moved in Algeria if Eni does not want to. The governments of the moment, Italian and Algerian, have always been in tow of the powerful multinational all gas and oil. And, in fact, what is happening in relations between the two states revolves around the exclusive interests of Eni, absolute dominus of strategic choices that even border on territorial sovereignty. The sequence of what we are about to tell you is indelibly marked by those American studies. According to the Yankee of geology, the Algerian-Provençal Basin, the one that surrounds Sardinia and the western sea that surrounds it, is marked by morphological and geo-thermal features similar to those of both the Red Sea Basins and the Levant, where it is evaluated the presence of massive gas reserves.
The Algerian Sardinian basin
And it is the geological “genesis” enclosed between Italy, or rather between Sardinia, Algeria, Tunisia, France and Spain that provides the most relevant evidence on the immense energy potential of the entire basin. This is where, for the first time, the data on the potential of gas and oil at the bottom of the sea around Sardinia emerge. In this case the numbers and units of measure are out of the reach of basic arithmetic. The figures would need too many zeros to fit on a sheet of paper.
Mountain of gas in the sea
The estimates on the quantities are reported as those indicated by the official maps: the Algero-Provençal Basin has a capacity of reserves equal to 51 trillion cubic meters of gas, 0.42 billion barrels of oil and 2.23 million barrels of natural gas derivatives in liquid form. To try to understand the numbers, a minimal comparison is enough: if 51 trillion cubic meters are estimated in the basin of the "Sardinian sea", the reserves of Algerian natural gas ascertained are approximately 160 trillion cubic meters. In practice, if Algeria with 160 trillion cubic meters of potential extracts 86.2 billion cubic meters of gas per year, it means that the potential of the offshore area, object of the American study, is equal to 28.6 billion cubic meters per year, more than Algeria itself currently exports through pipelines, in 2019 they were 26.7 billion cubic meters. This data would be enough to understand the extent of the study and to what extent the Mediterranean scenario could change rapidly after the collapse of European relations with the Russian front, up to the total blockage of all oil and gas supplies.
Military reports
And it is for this reason that military reports are multiplying in recent days precisely to avoid going "from the frying pan to the fire". In fact, in this case, there is not only the energy game at stake, but the most important one of the sovereignty of the sea and of the territorial borders in front of the house , this time of Sardinia. In recent days, Prime Minister Draghi flew to Algeria, obviously preceded by Claudio De Scalzi, Eni's number one.
The whole Eni decides
There was nothing to discuss, the State Body had already decided everything. The Prime Minister went, if anything, only to ratify, to affix the state seal to Algiers to Eni's wishes, or to increase the gas pressures in the pipelines connecting with Sicily. Official statements speak of 9 billion cubic meters more per year, but the well-informed believe that reaching half of what was announced, with that type of pipeline, would already be a miracle. For the rest, officially, nothing else has been talked about. With Abdelmadjid Tebboune , President of Algeria, (in the photo) Draghi "forgot" to tackle the hottest issue, the one addressed by the Italian defense analysts and beyond. Not a word, not even a hint, about the snatching of the "Sardinian sea", or rather the infinite expanse of international waters that the Maghreb state brought home with a coup d'état signed with a presidential decree on March 18, 2018 , formally communicated to the United Nations on the basis of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Not just any act, but a decree of the President of the Republic of Algeria by which the absolute power of that State in international waters was extended up to 200 nautical miles, the beauty of 370 kilometers. By breaking an unwritten rule of "mutual agreements", reciprocal agreements between states in the Mediterranean, Algeria, with an undisturbed blitz, has scored a real mugging on international waters, taking home not only sovereignty on that sea facing Sardinia, but, above all, that immense wealth of energy resources that the Americans revealed in their study which remained secret in the rooms of the powerful. Now that, however, the scenario has not only changed, but is destined to radicalize, the energy issue in the Mediterranean takes on strategic importance. So much so that the "Center for Advanced Studies for Defense" together with the "Defense Research and Analysis Institute" in their latest internal report note that "we cannot fail to mention the issue of exclusive economic zones".
Defense alert
"Algeria - the defense analysts write - proceeded to unilaterally establish its own exclusive economic zone without a preliminary agreement between the frontist and neighboring states". The very people who have the obligation to supervise the country's security, starting with energy governance , including sea borders, put it in black and white. Mediterranean.
Who is behind it?
Why has Italy not taken a single concrete step for four years to block Algeria's advance into the international sea off the coast of Sardinia? Why is the very institution of an Italian Exclusive Economic Zone stopped, such as to open a confrontation in the UN with Algeria? One element opens up unexplored scenarios: Sonatrach, the Algerian state company that deals with gas and oil, has made an iron pact with Eni and the French Total for prospecting in that stretch of sea snatched from Italy, to Sardinia and international waters. A "secret" agreement yet to be discovered.
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