Meloni meets, among others, the President of the Presidential Council Mohamed al-Menfi and the Prime Minister Abdulhamid al-Dbeibah. On the table is a gas deal that provides about $8 billion for the production of 850 cubic feet of gas per day, which is extracted in the Mediterranean Sea. This is evident from the statements of the director Farhat Bengdara of the National Oil Corporation in Libya.
However, Libya’s parliament and major armed factions refuse to recognize the legitimacy of Dbeibah’s government, raising fears of a new conflict after two years of relative calm.
Replacement
European countries have increasingly sought opportunities to replace Russian gas with other forms of energy from North Africa and elsewhere, ahead of the ongoing war in Ukraine.
Italy has already taken the lead in the search for African energy sources, ending with Algeria. The result was a strategic partnership in which Italy invests in the Algerian state energy company Sonatrach, thanks to which production, which had been declining for years, has returned to increase.
If the agreements were to be signed today, they could still be undermined by the internal conflict in Libya, which has divided the country between armed factions trying to take control of the government, not recognizing each other’s political legitimacy.