The oil fields in the Adriatic Sea whose concessions the referendum on Sunday 17 April is asking not to renew account for one per cent of Italy's oil. 80 per cent, by contrast, has been extracted for decades in Basilicata, where 70 drilling rigs are concentrated in the Val d'Agri. These wells make Italy the 49th largest oil producer in the world. Even from these first figures it is clear that our country, Italy, is not a major oil power. In short, Basilicata is not Texas. And the association Italia Nostra, in an 18-page dossier, explains why.

Oil in Italy

Number of active onshore concessions	119
Number of active offshore concessions	72
Number of onshore hydrocarbon exploration permits	83
Number of offshore hydrocarbon exploration permits	24
Fossil fuel reserves	130 million tonnes

The extraction figures

In Italy there are 83 onshore hydrocarbon exploration permits in force and 24 permits covering the seabed. Concessions — that is, the title issued following a successful exploration — number 119 onshore and 72 offshore. Despite the Adriatic being a "closed sea" with an extremely fragile ecosystem, and despite already being severely tested by 88 active oil extraction concessions within the 12-mile limit, as many as 44 of these were approved before 1986 and have therefore never been subjected to an environmental impact assessment.

Percentage of Italian oil extracted	80%
Number of drilling rigs in Basilicata	70
Number of barrels of oil extracted per day	90,000
Number of wells drilled	482
Number of active wells	37
Number of employees in the extraction sector	265
Difference between regional GDP and national average	-6.1%

Hydrocarbon extraction offers negligible benefits from an energy and economic standpoint, as the Ministry of Economic Development itself acknowledges: our hydrocarbon reserves amount to 130 million tonnes, of which only 30 per cent are classified as "certain" (50 per cent are "probable", 20 per cent "possible"), meaning they are destined to run out in a short time.

Why oil is not synonymous with wealth

Anyone who believes in the equation oil equals innovation and wealth should look at the figures relating to Basilicata's development attributable to fossil fuel extraction. The region from which 80 per cent of Italy's oil is extracted has the country's lowest gross domestic product (GDP), 265 employees in the extraction sector (against a population of 576,000) — of whom 143 are from Basilicata — and the lowest royalties in the world. The royalties that oil companies pay to Italy in general are among the lowest in Europe: 10 per cent, compared with 77 per cent in Denmark, 78 per cent in Norway and 82 per cent in England. Rounding off the picture is one of the highest migration rates: more than a thousand people have left the Val d'Agri in the past ten years, sending the proportion of elderly people in the total population soaring to the highest level in southern Italy. If one adds to this the lack of infrastructure, backwardness in the transport sector and the elimination of essential services in many municipalities, we can say that Basilicata has not grown rich thanks to oil, despite 90,000 barrels a day being extracted from 37 wells (out of 482 drilled over the years).

To say nothing of the impoverishment of the soil and the landscape: Italia Nostra points to subsurface contamination caused by chemical substances "covered by industrial secrecy", radioactive tracers used to aid the penetration of drilling rigs, and geological and seismic risks.

Black gold versus white gold

Italia Nostra also identifies the competition between oil and water as the defining challenge for the future of this beautiful land. The region, in fact, constitutes the largest water reservoir in central and southern Italy and is home to the largest earth-fill dam in Europe, Monte Cotugno. For every litre of oil, eight litres of water are required, and ten litres of polluting substances are released back into the environment. As a result, the Pertusillo reservoir — which supplies water to millions of inhabitants across Basilicata, Puglia, Calabria and Campania — has for several years been experiencing recurring fish die-offs linked, according to the investigations consulted by Italia Nostra, to oil exploitation itself.