WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE ITALY BOLOGNA - news journal UPDATE - (en) Italy, Umanita Nova #13-25 - From Romagna. Regasification plants and war (ca, de, it, pt, tr) [machine translation]

 On Saturday 12 April there were several demonstrations. In Bologna the

climate pride against the energy transition from above, in Milan against
the war and for Palestine (where the police coldly charged the
procession carrying out several arrests, the first field test of the
repression decree) and in Ravenna, at the national demonstration
"outside the gas chamber" against the regasification plant and the
energy policies of the governments. ---- In this last city the
libertarian Romagna was present with a lively and noisy anti-capitalist
and anti-militarist segment. We made clear, with banners, chants and
leaflets, the links between extractivism, supply of energy resources,
companies like Eni and Snam, harmful plants like regasification plants
and war.

After an accelerated approval process, Snam's BW Singapore vessel,
almost 300 meters long and 44 meters high (about a ten-story building),
arrived in Ravenna on Friday 28 February. It will serve as an off-shore
regasification plant (FSRU, Floating Storage and Regasification Unit).
Anchored about 8.5 km from the coast of Punta Marina (RA), it will
remain there for at least 25 years. To protect it from storm surges, an
880-meter-long concrete breakwater will also be built. In addition,
there will also be an onshore compression plant at Punta Marina. Snam's
overall investment in this project is equivalent to more than one
billion euros. The Ravenna plant will then connect to the Snam
Sulmona-Minerbio Adriatic Line with the final destination of the gas
being Northern Italy and the countries of Central Europe.

Together with the terminals in Piombino, Livorno, Panigaglia (La Spezia)
and Porto Viro (Rovigo), and those planned in the south to shorten the
sea routes, in Porto Empedocle (Agrigento) and Gioia Tauro (Reggio
Calabria), the Ravenna regasification plant will receive and return to a
gaseous state the liquefied natural gas (LNG) that arrives from the
other side of the world, mainly from the United States but also from
Algeria, Qatar and to a lesser extent from Egypt, Mozambique and Congo,
countries with authoritarian governments with which Italy - and Eni -
has strong industrial but also military collaboration ties and to which
we sell weapons and warships.

Making Ravenna an important regasification center at a national and
European level is a project born during the Draghi government in 2022,
following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. A conflict that saw European
countries side with their NATO allies through the decision to supply
weapons to the Ukrainian government.

The actual work to host the new regasification terminal off the coast of
Ravenna began on June 19, 2023, when the former president of the Region,
Stefano Bonaccini, of the Democratic Party, a major sponsor of the
project, was appointed extraordinary commissioner by the subsequent
Meloni government. It took just 120 days to issue the permits, in
exchange for the promise of 25 million euros in compensation. While the
overall authorization and construction process lasted less than three
years. Record times if we consider that a similar plant - the one
located about 15 km off the coast of Porto Viro - began operating in
2009, 14 years after the first feasibility study.

In addition to the environmental issues, which are certainly important,
the thing to highlight is how the LNG treatment and regasification
plants respond to what are in fact war logics, considered strategic
starting from the geopolitical scenario that arose with the
Russian-Ukrainian conflict.

It has not been sufficiently highlighted how the war in Ukraine, in
addition to being a battle for political influence between imperialist
powers (on one side Russia, on the other the EU, the United States and
NATO), was also a fight for the purchase and sale of natural gas and how
the energy policies of European countries have been redesigned.
After the reduction of Russian gas flows, through sanctions and the
sabotage of the Nord Stream (September 26, 2022), the United States
managed to establish itself as the leading supplier of LNG to Europe,
through specific trade agreements that exploited the ongoing conflict.

For EU countries, the purchase of American LNG has higher costs (double
or triple). This depends on the fracking technique and the subsequent
liquefaction which for the producer has much higher extraction,
processing and transport costs.
Even the construction of regasification plants to convert LNG into gas
have construction and management costs so high that they affect the
final price.

The United States is the world leader in LNG exports. The particular
fracking technique with which it is produced is much more polluting and
expensive than methane obtained with traditional extraction techniques.
The procedures require large quantities of water and drilling that
increase the risk of hydrogeological instability and earthquakes, as
well as requiring the massive use of chemicals.
The use of horizontal drilling and fracking have led to the doubling of
US gas production. It is estimated that, by the end of the decade,
almost one in three LNG carriers will depart from the United States.

With the Ravenna plant coming into full operation, Italy's overall
regasification capacity will rise to 28 billion cubic meters, equivalent
to the volumes that were imported from Russia in 2021.
The Ravenna plant has a treatment capacity of 5 billion cubic meters of
LNG per year, which translates into satisfying 8% of Italy's entire gas
supply. Gas that will then reach European countries through Italy.

The arrival of the regasification plant in Ravenna is therefore closely
linked to international war scenarios.
The Meloni government, in continuity with the previous Draghi executive,
and in full harmony with the European Commission, wants to make Italy a
methane hub in the Mediterranean. In addition to the new regasification
plants, in fact, the doubling of the TAP gas pipeline is planned, in
which Snam is involved, which from Melendugno (Lecce) carries
Azerbaijani gas to northern Italy and Europe.

Even if gas consumption in Italy is decreasing compared to the past due
to price fluctuations and energy production from alternative sources,
the real problem is the demand for energy that is growing more and more
instead of decreasing, as it should. The very assumptions of the
capitalist system are based on a hyperbole of infinite growth, at an
economic, industrial and technological level. But now the demand for
energy is growing in a way never seen before, with public and private
investments that are concentrating on energy-intensive productions such
as hi-tech, digital, AI, data centers, automation, robotics, the
military industry and aerospace.

Europe's rearmament plans (ReArm EU) and those for energy supply and
transition (RePower EU), from gas to nuclear but which do not leave out
the same "renewables", respond to the same logic of the
military-industrial complex and travel on a parallel track.

While the EU and Italy are preparing to spend hundreds of billions of
euros for the purchase of armaments and the construction of large-scale
works and regasification plants, not a single euro has arrived of the
1.2 billion of the PNRR promised by Von Der Lyen and the commissioner
structure for the flood victims of Emilia-Romagna, while cuts to
healthcare and social spending continue as usual to divert funds to the
Interior and Defense. Police order and military option, internal war and
external war, are increasingly connected. The new security decree, with
more protections and powers for the police and unbridled repression
against those who protest, fits perfectly into this context.

In a present marked by conflicts, massacres and genocides that are
taking place before our eyes - just think of the one underway in the
Gaza Strip, committed by means of weapons that also transit through the
port of Ravenna - it is all too clear that there can be no possible
environmentalism without antimilitarism and anticapitalism.

THE LIBERTARIA ROMAGNA

A more in-depth document on the link between energy policies and war
politics can be found at this link:
https://piccolifuochivagabondi.noblogs.org/europa-guerra-e-nocivita/

https://umanitanova.org/dalla-romagna-rigassificatori-e-guerra/
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