ROME: Italy’s energy minister said on Wednesday that the country can reactivate some coal-fired power stations if conflict in the Middle East should lead to an energy crisis.
Minister Gilberto Pichetto Fratin said in a television interview that Italy has “coal-powered stations that I wouldn’t like to re-activate but they are there in reserve to safeguard our ⁠country.”
Israeli and US ⁠forces struck targets across Iran on Tuesday, prompting Iranian strikes against energy infrastructure in other Gulf states considered US allies, in a region that accounts for just under a third of global ⁠oil production.
Iran has also targeted tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, through which about a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas flows. Traffic remained effectively closed for a fourth day after Iran attacked five ships.
Italy has a diversified portfolio of gas suppliers, which include Norway, Algeria and Azerbaijan among others.
In addition ⁠the ⁠country’s quantities of gas storage are at relatively high levels.
“On the (energy) security front, our country is ... quite safe quantitatively,” Pichetto Fratin said.
“We have the highest storage levels in Europe, we have diversified sources, and therefore we can say there is not an extremely severe situation regarding the quantities of resources, and I am speaking mainly about gas,” he added.