As if another nail in the coffin is needed, the Financial Times reports that “Italy’s Renzi pivots to Africa for alternatives to Russian gas” while Putin was signing a meaningless MoU with Erdogan that the latter then said had no signficance. The Italian prime minister was in Algiers the day after, saying, “In the future the energy question will increasingly be [developed] in a north-south direction, and so the relationship with African countries will be very important.”

Italy imports 90% of its gas, and nearly half of that from Russia. The diversification to Algeria makes sense, but oddly the FT article makes no mention of the recent Israeli proposal, together with EU members Cyprus and Greece, for its gas in the East Mediterranean, together with some from Cyprus, should reach Italy via Greece. This is especially odd, given the article’s acknowledgment of the the difficulties in the supply from Libya, which are back flowing but erratically.

Rome is helping Eni, a long-time partner of Gazprom reaching back into the days of the Cold War era, to decrease its dependence on the Russian giant. It hit a large strike off the coast of Mozambique recently, and this gas will certainly be developed for export to Asia. The Italians are also give ties with Algeria a social-welfare/immigration spin:

Italian officials argue there are other benefits to Mr Renzi’s African push. The creation of closer trade and investment relations, for example, might also help stem the wave of migrants journeying to Europe across the Mediterranean Sea. “This is a long-term strategy that will help tackle the deepest roots of illegal immigration,” says Luigi Marras, the director-general for global affairs at the Italian foreign ministry.

Renzi has also been considering Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan as suppliers, through the TANAP and the TAP, FT quotes him as saying in Algeria that “even greater determination” was needed to explore the “north-south axis”. This increases still further the likelihood that TAP will remain at its constructed volume of 10 bcm/y and not scale up to the 20 that project design held out as a possibility.

Rome realizes that the EU does not need any incarnation of South Stream, even if Brussels does not.