Rome, October 30 (askanews) – Founded on October 30, 1941, as the National Gas Pipeline Company, Snam celebrates its 85th anniversary this year. From the development of the Po Valley's natural gas fields to the network of the first gas pipelines, Snam helped lay the foundations for the Italian economic boom, leading the country's progressive methane gasification, under the guidance and vision of Enrico Mattei, who served as its president from 1949 until his death in 1962.
The anniversary was celebrated in Rome in the presence of the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, and government officials, along with the Minister of the Environment and Energy Security, Gilberto Pichetto Fratin, who highlighted the strategic importance of Snam's infrastructure and gas storage facilities at a time of geopolitical and energy crisis like the current one, with the need to diversify supply sources and routes, strengthen infrastructure, and increase the system's response capacity.
Gas, Snam CEO Agostino Scornajenchi emphasized, continues to represent the energy system's last line of defense, the resource that guarantees security and flexibility when other sources are unavailable. Agostino Scornajenchi, Snam CEO: "Snam's 85 years are 85 years of an extraordinary story, born from an intuition many years ago by Enrico Mattei. From a paradoxically poor product, a byproduct of traditional oil exploration, he discovered a fluid and the technologies to transport that fluid and provide energy for the gasification of Italy."
"A network that still today transports and will continue to transport a fundamental amount of this country's energy. Fifty percent of the electricity we live on," Scornajenchi said, "is generated by gas, a very significant portion of industrial consumption, the paper, cement, and ceramic industries, and all the heating of our homes, hospitals, and families is generated by gas, a molecule that represents the insurance policy of the national energy system. You see, we always talk about our role, but our role is precisely this: to be there when others aren't: energy sources have their strengths and weaknesses, and each has its own advantages. Gas has the great advantage of always being there, even and especially when others are no longer available." The event was also an opportunity to take stock of the gas storage situation in Italy, one of the most virtuous countries in Europe with a fill level that has exceeded 90%, and to underline how the system, lacking the considerable contribution of Russian gas, has been able to promptly React. Agostino Scornajenchi, CEO of Snam: "85 years of infrastructure, investment, and expertise are what allowed us to emerge so quickly from the Russian gas crisis. A mountain of gas was arriving from a single supplier, and in just a few months we completely repositioned the flows. Now more gas is arriving from North Africa, a lot of gas is arriving from Azerbaijan with the TAP pipeline, an infrastructure no one wanted, and without which the country would be shut down today. The same goes for the positioning of two regasification vessels, one in Piombino and the other in Ravenna, without which the country would not have survived the last winters and summers. This summer, when the temperatures we all remember were high, the country was running on gas because there was little hydroelectric production, because there were few imports, and when others aren't there, we have to be there."
Askanews