Italian premier cancels gas trip to Africa due to COVID

By Alvise Armellini

ROME (AA) - Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi has tested positive for COVID-19 and ministers will instead lead a trip to Africa this week for deals to reduce Rome’s energy reliance on Russia.

Draghi was scheduled to visit Angola on Wednesday and the Republic of the Congo on Thursday to discuss deliveries of liquefied natural gas (LNG), as part of his government’s drive to sever energy ties with Moscow in the wake of the war in Ukraine.

However, he will no longer go after testing positive to COVID-19, his office said in a statement, adding that the 74-year-old premier is “asymptomatic.”

Draghi’s office said the trip to Angola and Congo would still go ahead and would be led by Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio and Ecological Transition Minister Roberto Cingolani, who accompanied the prime minister last week on another energy-focused mission to Algiers.

On that occasion, Italy’s state-controlled energy company ENI signed a deal to boost supplies of Algerian gas by up to 9 billion cubic meters per year by 2022-2023. Also last week, ENI announced an agreement to increase LNG imports from Egypt.

Last year, Italy imported 95% of its gas needs, and Russia was its largest supplier, with 38% of the total. But Draghi is working to drastically reduce that.

“We no longer want to depend on Russian gas, because economic dependence should not become political subjection. To do it, we must diversify sources of energy and find new suppliers,” he told the Corriere della Sera daily on Sunday.