Modelling the energy risk of oil supply to Italy

The Italian energy mix is still heavily dependent on fossil fuels, especially natural gas and crude oil. However, the domestic production of oil and gas are scarce and insufficient to cover the demand, therefore almost the totality of fossil fuel has to be imported. This makes Italy one of the most energy dependent country in Europe, with an import dependency of 77%, and the assessment of the supply energy security becomes a crucial aspect. The national energy security is referred to two fronts: the internal front and the external front. The internal front is related with the domestic availability of energy resources and the resilience of the transmission and distribution system, the second one with the security of the corridors through which the energy commodities reach the Italian entry points. The present thesis is focused on the analysis of crude oil and oil products, which account for 33,8% of the total primary energy supply and for 38,2% of the final energy consumption of the country. The aim of the work is to develop a novel modelling approach for quantitatively evaluate the national external energy security, able to support the policy-decision making by assessing the impacts of possible contingencies and the mid/long-terms effects of alternative strategies. For this purpose, an overall analysis of the oil trade is performed by identifying all the supply corridors (open-sea routes and oil pipelines) and by tracking the oil flows from the sources (oil fields) to the national entry points. A database has been built, based on a complete mapping of the oil fields in terms of location, available reserves and annual production and classification of crude oil types, on the technical characterisation of the transport infrastructures (like capacity, length, pressure and diameter of oil pipelines, deadweight tonnage and actual intake of oil tankers, number and time duration of maritime voyages) and on the identification of the Italian entry points. Moreover, ad hoc metrics and integrated indicators have been defined in order to provide an overall measure of the security level, taking into account the international geopolitical situation and the spatial dimension of the energy corridors (including the corridor length, the geopolitical security of the crossed countries and the possible presence of chokepoints and piracy phenomenon). The developed methodology considers a multi-layered risk analysis able to provide a complete overview of the interconnection between geopolitical and energy aspects of the Italian oil supply, taking into account the energy spatial dimension. Several scenarios are implemented and analysed in order to assess the impacts of possible events such as the unavailability of a given infrastructure or the increasing of geopolitical tensions, on the national energy security.