Gas production in Italy: back to growth after decades of decline

After decades of decline, Italian gas production is growing again. The year 2025, according to estimates by Assorisorse, brings a dowry of about 3.3 billion national cubic metres. Twenty years ago, 2005 closed at 12 billion standard cubic metres (smc), down from 20 billion in the 1990s. Since then, a continuous descent: 8 billion in 2010 becoming 6 in 2016, 4.4 in 2020 and then down to 2.9 billion in 2024 (Unmig data). With the conspicuous decline in production from the sea due to regulatory restrictions.

"The rise in 2025 is essentially due to the entry into production between 2024 and 2025 of two new fields: one offshore operated by Eni, Argo Cassiopea in the Sicilian Channel, and one onshore operated by Gas Plus, the Longanesi in the province of Ravenna," explains Davide Usberti, vice-president of Assorisorse. "This upturn," he continues, "is the result of the past, given by fields that have completed the works necessary for start-up.

New starts have complex dynamics characterised by initial instability. In this regard, Eni's Argo Cassiopea plant off the coast of Gela, after the start of extraction in August 2024, went from 106 million standard cubic metres in January to 34 million in September 2025 (Unmig data). "For Eni, the management of Italian gas assets has as its primary objective the implementation of actions that allow production levels to be maintained, and that can lead to a reversal of the trend on some assets," the company said. "To this end, development opportunities are being assessed in existing and already explored concessions, also made available again thanks to recent regulatory changes. It is in this context that the production of Argo Cassiopea, which has contributed and continues to contribute to the reversal of the trend in Italian gas production, fits in'. And the same industrial project could be the subject of future upgrades.

"Recently, our country has experienced a real upheaval in the regulatory context related to the sector's activities following the approval in early 2019 of the so-called Pitesai (Plan for the Sustainable Energy Transition of Eligible Areas, ed.)," Usberti recounts, "a planning tool that in substance not only precluded in many areas activities for the search for new deposits, but also conditioned the continuation of those in productive or producible concessions. It was only in the first part of 2024 that a series of administrative rulings and consequent legislative acts, which consolidated the overcoming of Pitesai, re-established a more balanced regulatory context'.

Therefore, for a little over a year now, this context has been judged suitable for the continuation of activities both for the maintenance of production concessions and for the reactivation of the search for new gas reserves, the true driving force for a stable increase in volumes. "In this sense," Usberti continues, "operators in the sector have recently resumed the evaluation of medium and long-term programmes aimed not only at replacing production destined to run out, but hopefully at reversing the trend of national gas production. To this end, however, the knot of uncertainties and the timing of authorisation processes remains. Permitting, which is the responsibility of central and peripheral state bodies, has a fatal impact on the time needed to maintain production levels and develop new ones'.