The order finally came: Enrico Mattei was not to return alive from that trip to Sicily. So, on October 27, 1962, the plane returning from Catania to Milan was loaded with 150 grams of TNT, along with the president of ENI, the pilot, and an American journalist. A small amount, but sufficient if detonated during the delicate landing phase. Thus, of the man the Americans called "the most powerful Italian since Julius Caesar," only a few macabre fragments, blackened by flames, remained in the countryside near Pavia. For many, it was a foretold end, even though the official investigations—skillfully sidetracked for decades?—supported the theory of an accident.
But who gave that order? Why assassinate Enrico Mattei if the Christian Democrats had already decided to oust him from Eni? Why eliminate him just when Eni's founder had hung up the hatchet with the "seven sisters," the major companies that controlled the oil market after World War II?
In their essay "Lampi sull'Eni" (Feltrinelli editore, 2026, Euro 21, 85, pp. 400. Also available as an ebook) , journalist Giuseppe Oddo and magistrate Vincenzo Calia answer these questions through extensive archival work and a reexamination of court documents . The starting point of their investigation, naturally, is the actions of Mattei, a figure who is inconvenient for many. Americans call him, as mentioned, "the most powerful Italian since Julius Caesar," and detest him because he often gets in the way of their oil interests, but at the same time they admire his activism, his unscrupulousness, his managerial skill. In Italy, despite the superficial smiles, many consider him too powerful and, above all, too independent for a country like ours, which has always been based on the balancing act between different powers—politics, industry, finance, the Church—all poised to carve up the national cake.
Enrico Mattei was, in fact, a disrupter of domestic and international balances. Above all, he was a man of grand plans and courageous dreams. Thus, from the first days after the end of World War II, he developed the conviction that Italy needed energy independence to regain its lost political autonomy. Oil was needed to restart industry, modernize the country, and rebuild; black gold was controlled by the British and, above all, the Americans. For this reason, Mattei did not hesitate to compete with the large Anglo-American oil companies, market leaders, convinced that there was room for everyone.
First, it prevented the sale of concessions to foreign companies for the exploitation of Italian natural gas fields. Then, in the 1950s, it launched the oil challenge. In 1953, it founded ENI (National Hydrocarbons Agency), ignoring the oil monopolies imposed by large companies. It negotiated exploitation concessions directly with producing countries in North Africa and the Middle East, choosing those that were poorest and most in need of aid. It didn't strangle them like other companies, but offered profit sharing, development technologies, and scholarships. It faced states that had just emerged from colonial rule and understood—unlike the Americans, British, and French—their need for equal treatment.
Mattei's farsighted capitalism shuffled the cards, guaranteed Italy significant energy autonomy, and transformed, in just a few years, a defeated country into a nation capable of political influence on the Middle Eastern and Mediterranean political arena. And herein lies Mattei's flaw, for Oddo and Scalia: the fact that Mattei was attacking the interests of a very specific Mediterranean power, namely France. France, according to the book's authors, was the country most urgently in need of Mattei's removal: within days, Eni was due to sign an agreement that would open up the vast hydrocarbon reserves of the Algerian desert to him, removing the country from France's sphere of influence and violating the balance of power established in March 1962 at Évian by the French government and the Algerian National Liberation Front. The cooperation of Italian intelligence agencies and Eni officials in command was crucial to the plan's success: by diverting investigations and concealing evidence, they guaranteed cover and impunity for the instigators of the murder. With Mattei's death, Eni shelved the Mediterranean policy that had cost its founder his life. In short, Enrico Mattei's was a political assassination that changed not only the fate of Eni, but of Italian Mediterranean policy and our energy sovereignty.