Rome - The main problem facing Italian oil giant ENI SpA is
the Kashagan oil field in the Caspian Sea, said outgoing chief
executive of the Italian oil giant ENI, Paolo Scaroni, at his
last shareholder assembly on Thursday, in which the baton was
formally passed to his successor, Claudio Descalzi.
"When I arrived in 2005, the outgoing (CEO) Vittorio
Mincato gave me a piece of paper on which was written 'problem
no. 1, Kashagan'. If I should do the same thing for Descalzi, I
would also write Kashagan," said Scaroni, making reference to
the world's largest - and deeply problematic - oil discovery in
the last 30 years, which has been beset by years of delays,
billions of dollars in budget overruns, and most recently by
news that roughly 80 km of gas and oil pipelines must be
replaced due to leaks.
ENI has already sunk 8.2 billion of the roughly 50 billion
USD invested by consortium partners in the project over the last
17 years.
Thursday's shareholder assembly confirmed the promotion of
Descalzi - until now ENI's chief of access and exploration
operations - after ENI's largest shareholder, the Italian
government, selected him late last month as Scaroni's third
mandate was coming to a close.
Scaroni held the CEO post for the longest period in ENI's
history save that of its legendary founder, Enrico Mattei, whose
life was cut short by a plane crash in 1962.
The assembly also confirmed the government pick for a new
chairman of the board, steel heiress and ex-leader of Italian
industrialists Emma Marcegaglia, who replaces Giuseppe Recchi.
Scaroni and Recchi told the assembly in a letter that they
are handing over a strengthened company whose debts have been
halved in the last three years.
"We deliver to our shareholders a company that is
increasingly focused on the upstream, with excellent prospects
for profitability and cash generation," the letter said.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © Copyright ANSA
