By Angelo Amante and Francesca Landini<\/p>\n
ROME, May 7 (Reuters) – Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Libyan counterpart Abdulhamid Dbeibah discussed \u200con Thursday strengthening energy cooperation at a time when Italy \u200cis looking to diversify energy supplies due to the turmoil in the Gulf.<\/p>\n
Italy, highly \u200bdependent on imported energy, is particularly exposed to the surge in global fuel prices triggered by the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.<\/p>\n
“(The leaders) discussed ways to further strengthen the already solid bilateral cooperation, with particular reference to \u200ceconomic relations and investment \u2060in the energy sector,” Meloni’s office said after the talks in Rome.<\/p>\n
“The two leaders then reaffirmed their shared \u2060commitment to managing migration.”<\/p>\n
Libya is Rome’s biggest supplier of crude oil, accounting for nearly a fifth of Rome’s total crude oil imports. However, Libya\u2019s gas \u200bexports \u200bto Italy dropped to around 1 \u200bbillion cubic metres in 2025, \u200cfrom 1.4 bcm in 2024.<\/p>\n
The drop was largely the result of supply-side constraints in Libya – including rising domestic demand, repeated disruptions to infrastructure and political instability – which kept the Greenstream pipeline to Italy running well below capacity.<\/p>\n
Members of Italy’s influential parliamentary security committee visited Libya in \u200clate April, and discussed with Dbeibah the \u200bimportance of “increased investment to allow a significant \u200brise in Libyan gas production \u200band, consequently, exports to Italy”, according to a \u200cstatement.<\/p>\n
Italian state-controlled Eni has been present \u200bin Libya since \u200b1959 and is the country’s leading international operator, with an equity production of approximately 162,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day in \u200b2025 and three \u200cdevelopment projects currently in execution, two of which will start \u200bup in 2026.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Angelo Amante and Francesca Landini; Editing \u200bby Alvise Armellini and Alison Williams)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Angelo Amante and Francesca Landini ROME, May 7 (Reuters) – Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Libyan…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13779,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[325,1088,5,2157],"class_list":{"0":"post-13778","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-italy","8":"tag-giorgia-meloni","9":"tag-italian-prime-minister","10":"tag-italy","11":"tag-libya"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13778\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}