In line with the European trend, the Italian refinery sector is experiencing a major crisis that has led to reduced or closed capacity, or launched a process to convert the sector to biofuels.
The first Italian refinery to pay the price of the crisis has been the one in Gela, Southern Sicily, where a large ENI petrochemical plant, covering approximately 500 hectares, has been built in the early 1960s. In 2019 the plant has been converted in a green refinery processing biomass instead of oil. It is the “most innovative biorefinery in Europe”, according to Eni’s website.
Effectively, what has this reconversion meant for the Gela? Serious repercussions on employment, with hundreds of jobs that have been lost, and false promises of sustainability and circular economy, considering that the plant mainly transforms palm oil from Indonesia. The citizens of Gela continue to deal with the abnormal incidences of some pathologies, including neonatal malformations, but the local Court has not established any link with the emissions deriving from the petrochemical plant.
With the installation of the biorefinery, ENI committed to dismantle the old plants and reclaim the area, with 17 interventions to be completed by 2022. On October 2021, Gela Public Prosecutor’s Office seized Eni Rewinds spa, a branch of ENI that deals with decontamination, because of failed restoration of groundwater, still highly contaminated. Today, just one month after a large fire broke out in the refinery due to the explosion of a furnace, the conversion is looking more and more like a deceit.
What happened in Gela is very likely to be reiterated in Stagno – town in Tuscany, province of Livorno, where Eni owns one of Italy’s biggest and oldest refineries, which has a capacity of 85 thousand barrels/day. The plant has greatly impacted the surrounding area, which is now of the country’s most polluted territory and shows higher-than-average incidences of tumors, malformations, and respiratory diseases.
As part the global refining crisis, and Eni’s plan to move its refinery business outside Europe, the Livorno plant is currently facing an industrial restructuring which will lead to its closure in 2022. Consequently, thousands of jobs are at risk. Rather than proceeding with the land reclamation activities required by the law, Eni has proposed to build two additional industrial plant to replace the closing one: one bio-refinery (like the one of Gela) and a waste-to-methanol (or hydrogen) plant. The latter was explicitly included in one of the drafts of Italy’s recovery plan and is set to receive public funding.
If approved, the development of these plants will enable Eni to not proceed with remediation activities, add further health and environmental burden to the region, and not solve the job crisis which is unfolding in the area.
