| Summary/Abstract |
The strategic importance of Libya to Italy’s energy interests has been a constant feature of Italy’s attitude towards the republican regime which was recognized on 1 September 1969. This followed a tradition already well established by Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi’s (ENI) actions and, even earlier, by the presence of numerous Italians going back to the colonial period. However, Italy’s need for oil often clashed with the complex and changing personality of Gaddafi and created a relationship that was constantly at risk. The Italian government and ENI often found themselves in great difficulty because of the inconvenient demands of the Arab leader. The purpose of this article is to examine the development of this difficult oil relationship, focusing attention on both the 1970s and 1980s. There is a wealth of Italian literature on this subject but most of the studies examine only the start of the 1970s and the oil crisis of 1973. Although scholarly works reassessing this topic in English are rather limited, there exists an important international literature on Libyan history and the oil issue. New documentation now available at the Giulio Andreotti Archive of the Luigi Sturzo Institute Historical Archive makes it possible to complete this earlier research and to analyze the later years. Andreotti was the leading actor in the relationship with Gaddafi during the 1970s and 1980s and, in general, he was the most powerful and prominent Italian politician at least until the late 1980s. Consequently, this article mainly uses the unpublished documents of the Giulio Andreotti Archive and documentation from ENI’s Historical Archive. Thanks to these sources, it now appears possible to reconstruct in greater detail the decisive moments of the Italian–Libyan collaboration. The article, by retracing the key moments of this difficult relationship from the point of view of oil issues and examining in depth the complicated events of 1970s and 1980s, aims to highlight both the importance of energy supplies for Italy and the role played by both ENI and Andreotti in an attempt to maintain Italian oil interests in Libya.
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