the judge is missing, the Corriere.it panel decides

Barring new delays and other twists and turns, today the Lazio Regional Administrative Court decides whether Italians will risk remaining in the cold next winter. In the folders of the judges, among the many appeals to be dealt with today, there is the one against the docking of the Golan Tundra regasification terminal presented by the mayor of Piombino Francesco Ferrari (Brothers of Italy) and supported by the leader of the Italian Left Nicola Fratoianni: they do not want the ship in the port of Piombino; but without it, if the regasification terminal does not come on stream within a few months, Italy in the summer of 2023 will not be able to fill the gas storages to face the next winter.

And to say that the country, once the energy crisis opens, had arrived first in Europe in the most difficult race. Thanks to the work of ENI and the government of Mario Draghi, Italy has concluded new gas supply agreements by far in the shortest timescales and in the largest quantities. By 2024 it will be able to count on 18 billion cubic meters of new imports of gas and, above all, liquefied gas. Yet it risks arriving among the last countries in getting the raw material to homes and businesses.

It is not the responsibility of the industrial sector. Snam, the gas network companyhas already demonstrated the ability to procure and build the infrastructure needed to process liquefied gas and get it into the system faster than its German competitors, for example. But in Germany the first regasification vessel has already been moored in the port of Wilhelmshaven (Lower Saxony) since last Saturday; the second will do so by the end of this month in Lubmin (Pomerania) and the third will dock at the mouth of the Elbe next month. In Holland, two regasification terminals leased this year, after the Italian ones destined for Piombino and Ravenna, are already in operation in Eemshaven (province of Groningen).

In Italy, however, the first ship, the one scheduled for Piombino, will operate not before April. The authorization of an ad hoc committee of 44 entities only arrived at the end of October and only since then has Snam been able to start preparing the terminal. He is doing it in a shorter time than it took in Germany for the technical part. But then there is also the legal game, the one being played this morning at the TAR. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s party has not shown the will or ability to withdraw the appeal of Mayor Ferrari, supported by the right as well as the left.

But not even the third section of the Administrative Court of Lazio I will have a simple task today, because the boarding school is decapitated. Last Monday the section president Silvestro Maria Russo, the man who in theory should have investigated the matter more, was suspended for a year from exercising public office: he is suspected of an exchange of favors aimed, according to the accusation of corruption moved by the Rome prosecutor’s office, to improve their career prospects. Now the college will have to decide without him, replaced in extremis by the councilor Alfonso Graziano.

So if the Lazio TAR were to accept the mayor’s appeal of Piombino, could order Snam to block the works for the docking of the Golan Tundra in the port. At that point, Italy’s path to guaranteeing its energy independence next winter would be uphill. The agreements for liquefied gas concluded in recent months in Algeria, Congo, Angola and Egypt would become almost useless for now, because Italy’s regasification capacity could not increase. The Golan Tundra must ensure 5 billion cubic meters of gas per year and there would be no alternative, at this stage, to docking at Piombino: no other port in the Tyrrhenian Sea has the seabed and connections to the national gas network suitable for guaranteeing quick entry into operation.

The second regasification vessel purchased by Snam, to be located off the coast of Ravenna, cannot be operational before the beginning of 2024. Meanwhile in Piombino the opposition to the Golan Tundra does not only unite right and left: a sign has appeared in the city that exploits the anti-scientific propaganda of non-vax to put in question the safety, guaranteed by the technicians, of the ship on which the next winter of the Italians depends. The stakes with the High Speed ​​Train and the tunnel to connect Turin and Lyon, in comparison, were almost small.