Modelling the role of oil in the Italian energy security

It has become clear that the present energy paradigm is not sustainable anymore and it is necessary to find new ways to comply with global energy demand avoiding GHGs emissions (leading to global warming and consequently climate change phenomena) and air pollutant emissions (causing negative impacts on human health). Therefore, in the last years several international agreements were signed in order to counteract the climate change effects and to promote more sustainable energy policies supporting the so-called “energy transition”. The aim is to move from traditional energy systems based on fossil fuels to an energy mix based on renewables. Despite this need for de-carbonization, developing countries still push demand of fossil resources. Developed countries like Italy, on the contrary, promote sustainability-oriented policies. Indeed renewables resources experienced a constant increase in their penetration during last 10 years and are expected to become the key commodities in the energy mix in the long term. Nevertheless, in the short mid-term, even in these countries fossil fuels still play a relevant role. In particular, oil maintains a crucial role in transport sector. As well, Italian energy system is still dependent on fossil fuels: oil and natural gas accounted respectively for 34,0% and 34,5% of total primary energy supply in 2018. Furthermore, due to the unavailability of internal oil reserves, Italy is a net importer from oil producing countries such as Iraq, Azerbaijan, Russia and Saudi Arabia. Thus, Italy is strongly subjected to geopolitical dynamics involving these countries and is more vulnerable to oil supply disruption. The relevance of energy security requires the availability of science-based models and tools for supporting the policy-decision making, in order to assess the impacts of possible contingencies and the mid-/long-terms effects of alternative mitigation strategies. The aim of this thesis is to develop and implement a new model for quantification of the total energy risk related to Italian oil suppliers. For this purpose, an overall analysis of the oil trade is performed through the collection and processing of data from different open-source and purchased databases. Then all oil suppliers were identified and oil flows from the oil fields to the national entry points were tracked. Once known Italian entry points, the oil pathways were traced backwards through a georeferred mapping of both captive and open-sea corridors (including refineries, ports, pipelines and maritime routes). Moreover, further analysis was focused both on technical characteristics of oil pipelines, transport infrastructures and geopolitical risk of crossed countries. This multi-layer approach to risk analysis allows to provide a complete vision of the interconnections between national security and the geopolitical stability of supply countries. Furthermore, ad hoc metrics and integrated indicators were defined in order to provide an overall measure of energy risk of oil supply. Finally, several scenarios were built and analysed with the aim of comparing the impact of possible adverse events (e.g., unavailability of a given infrastructure, emergence of geopolitical tensions or commercial disputes) on national energy security in terms of supply risk.