The Silent Friend. Eni and Gaddafi's Libya. An interpretation

On 5 May 1971, Moro was in Tripoli to offer Gaddafi a collaboration in crucial economic field, particularly in petrochemical industry, representing a key sector for such country like Libya, that was rich of hydrocarbons and eager to promote new projects of Industrial development. Moro’s visit rep-resented a turning point in bilateral relations. On 25 February 1974, Abd al-Salam Jallud, regime’s number two, signed a bilateral agreement on sci-entific and economic cooperation in Italy. As Italian oil imports reached 30 million tons a year, a plan for new Libyan refineries was approved by the two governments. Eni became a strategic investor in Libya, along with other pri-vate and public Italian companies offering new projects and joint ventures in a country which was short of hospitals, schools, streets and other basic social facilities. Eventually, the Italian foreign policy was largely successful in strengthening economic relations and in stabilizing the Libyan political scenario. It was a case of ‘indispensable cooperation’ because, on the one hand, Italy could not obtain elsewhere the same cheap conditions in pur-chasing energy supplies; on the other hand, Libya could not achieve tech-nological assistance and investments avoiding the risk of neo- colonialism. The only Western oil company was not hurt by Libyan government, so not affected by the nationalizations of hydrocarbons’ assets, was the Italian Eni. Despite the decision of Gaddafi to expulse the Italian community and to expropriate Italian’s propriety there, the 1970s turned to be the golden age of the economic bilateral relations between Italy and Libya. In the per-spective of the USA, the development of economic ties between Italy and Libya was a matter of unfair competition by Italians that were showing a lack of solidarity towards other Western companies engaged in Libya.