A nocturnal blitz, as befits the Sardinian story of the "six-legged dog" . The dominus of oil and gas in Italy, that state body born and raised under the aegis of Enrico Mattei , has not been denied even this time. To sell, or rather to give, in the “Sardinia portfolio” there was an expanse of sun and salt, sea water and flamingos. A naturalistic oasis "invented" at the beginning of the last century by a Tuscan technician with a penchant for nature and a passion for business. He, the engineer Luigi Contivecchi, farsighted entrepreneur of the environment, in 1921, invented a system of communicating vessels close to the beach of Giorgino, with the aim of defeating malaria and producing white gold, that salt of Santa Gilla capable of regenerating itself with the same frequency of winter and summer.
Longa manus
Eni's longa manus , in the second year of the pandemic, one hundred years later, succeeded in its plans: to wrest even that good of God from the island. In the silence of the Eur ice palace in Rome, far from prying eyes and curious ears, in the last few hours he has put pen to paper an operation destined to permanently cancel Eni's presence in southern Sardinia. All managed with a timing worthy of a state flight strategist: piece by piece, promises upon promises, all announced with great fanfare and drowned in regional oblivion. Eni is a pneumatic hammer , relentless in the demolition of all hope, first declined with glossy and four-color brochures and, then, ripped up with the impact force of a mine sprint. On the history of Sardinian salt, that of Contivecchi SpA, is as punctual as the deadline of the New Year. Just 365 days after the advent of the knight of the Holy Sepulcher, a certain Antonio Donato Todisco, in the chlor-soda plants of Macchiareddu, Eni scores the final blow : sale of the shares of the company that managed that immense expanse of rises on the outskirts of Cagliari. The operation takes place in absolute silence, with the aim of putting everyone in front of the fait accompli, the Region first. After all, we know that Eni is used to commanding, imposing, doing what it wants, especially in the Sardinian home. To do so, it deploys the full weight of a state-owned company, with the intrusiveness of those who have done and undone, without ever paying a pledge, from the lack of environmental remediation in mining land to those of chemistry. Yet another blitz takes place close to the first body of water in the heart of Sardinia , that lagoon of Santa Gilla, a solar reflection for the capital of the island. Share shares sold. He sells Contivecchi SpA, in the name and on behalf of Eni, he buys Italkali, the Palermo ruler of rock salt, not salt from salt, but from mines. From the legacy of Enrico Mattei to that of the lawyer Francesco Morgante, the king of salt. A real Sicilian oligarch of white gold capable of losing 51% of Italkali in 2015 with a single move to none other than the Region of Sicily, which had "forgotten" to secure the public ownership of those mines . Now the heirs of the patriarch of that all-Sicilian operation, despite never having managed a salt pan, get their hands on the most important economic and environmental compendium of Sardinia: the salt flats of Santa Gilla. The cost of the operation is ignored . It is certainly known that the preliminary sale, transfer of shares of Contivecchi to Italkali, was signed in the middle of last Wednesday night. As usual, no press release, no announcement with great fanfare, but very strict silence, so as not to disturb the "escape from the salt". The communication to the RSU, the unitary trade union representatives of Macchiareddu, arrives with the effectiveness of a telegram, concise and without details. Just a bureaucratic step. Ditto for the Region, which, instead of a telegram, receives an epitaph on the operation. On 31 May next, Eni, trade unions and the lords of Palermo will make official presentations in the offices of the Regional Department of Industry. Wedding invitations already consummated . On that occasion it will be understood whether chronic subjection to Eni will prevail, or whether the Region will put a serious and concrete barrier to what appears to be the "sale" of a "regional mining concession" in defiance of written rules and commitments made. .
It pays no duty
Eni, in fact, takes home this umpteenth escape without paying any duty to Sardinia , liquidating its commitments, recently put on paper, with an act as secret as it is solitary. The frames of the mind evoke the proclamations of Claudio Descalzi, Eni's number one, who three years ago, between ponds and lined flights of pink flamingos, declaimed the industrial and environmental value of those 2,615 hectares of salt and sun transformed into an oasis of Fai, Fondo Ambiente Italia, indicated as the "moral" guarantor of the environmental commitments of the State Body. The escape plan, then, was just in its infancy. It had been devised in the individual details , deployed with a first large parade and, only later, fully implemented with the sale of all the productive assets starting from the chlor-soda industrial plants. , between white mountains and cinematic takes, the illusion of a new life for that compendium evaporates like sea water in the saline one. Just one season and, then, the plan comes to life. It starts with the industrial asset, the one that transformed salt into chlorine-soda, which is fundamental in the hygiene industry and beyond. In that case, we are in April 2021, Eni, in contravention of all the commitments of the facade, sold, or perhaps sold, the chlorine-soda plant to the anonymous "Assemini Chemical Society", coincidentally created just a few weeks first by a well-informed and well-liked gentleman in oil palaces, that Antonio Donato Todisco, already the protagonist of an unedifying industrial affair in Brescia, still in the attention of the judicial reports with heavy accusations on the environmental level. Although the regional concession prevented the separation of the industrial asset from that of the salt pans, the Region pretends nothing has happened and does not contest the sale. Eni keeps the salt "tubs", but sells the industrial stills. A year goes by.
Black holes
We are on May 18 last: it is time for the "sale" of the salt pans, the ones that, just three years ago, had been the subject of a renewal of the regional mining concession. An act over the top and outside the norms . In fact, at least four fundamental questions weigh heavily on this operation: the transfer of the concession to a new company is expressly forbidden; the duration of the regional concession; the financial commitments signed and not maintained by Eni; the lack of transparency on the sale with the exclusion of Sardinian operators. The first major issue is article "seven" of the existing concession. The provision is precise: "The concession is not subject to autonomous transfer, which must be authorized in advance by the Department of Industry - Mining and environmental recovery service". What appears to be a corporate artifice, with the takeover of a new company in the share capital, is clearly a circumvention of the rules on transparency and competition . In the case of a new entity, the Region should, in fact, have held an international competition and entrusted the concession to the highest bidder, both economically and socially and environmentally. Added to this is a substantial flaw in the gift that the Region (at the time of Pigliaru) gave to Eni, guaranteeing him a renewal of the concession for 27 years. All this in contrast with a specific provision sanctioned by a regional resolution, the 47/18 of 20 October 2009 which provided: "The temporal duration of the quarry authorization and the mining concession must be commensurate with the size of the deposit and the actual period amortization of the investments necessary to finance mining research, the start-up of the fields and the construction of new plants, and in any case not exceeding 15 years ". The Region, therefore, would have made a “gift” to Eni of at least 12 years, given that all the other concessions, including those of other salt pans, subsequent to the renewal of the State Body, took place for a maximum period of fifteen years. To this is added a financial commitment of Eni of 60 million euros signed at the time of renewal of the concession . The state body, however, has invested little or nothing. Finally, transparency. A team of companies operating in Sardinia, all users of the salt from that compendium, also participated in the competition, unknown to most.
The Sardinians excluded
It included the Fluorsid of the Cagliari Calcio patron, Tommaso Giulini and Cadelano, the first refining industry in Sardinia. Excluded, but it is not known with what reasons, in favor of the Sicilians of Italkali. Last two entries. There is a "yellow" concerning the approval of the characterization plan of the salt marshes, in practice the presence or absence of environmental problems in the subsoil. The document has been under review by a competent body for over a year and a half . In reality, however, the subject is taboo. The game, in fact, would weigh heavily on environmental costs in the broader compendium of Santa Gilla. Finally, there is the "salt leak", very often denied to Sardinian operators themselves as documented in our investigations in recent months. Among the latest Eni operations there are at least two gigantic ships loaded with Sardinian salt destined for Spain. The white mountains stored inside the Port Channel, which we publish in the photo, are clear evidence of yet another scar on the island. Su Santa Gilla is the sunset time of the Sardinian salt.