When in November 2016 the United States presidential election crowned the billionaire Donald Trump, someone in Italy must have rubbed their hands together. More precisely in Rome, in Piazza Enrico Mattei, on the upper floors of the "Palazzo di vetro": the headquarters of the Ente nazionale idrocarburi (Eni).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ix6Lvfjdyn0

Eni has agreed to explore an extremely vulnerable area in Alaska

It is indeed the Italian oil company that has been chosen by the Washington administration to resume oil exploration in the Arctic Ocean. That is, in one of the areas that is absolutely most at risk from an environmental standpoint in the event of an accident. One need only recall the disaster of 24 March 1989, when Alaska was devastated by the wreck of the Exxon Valdez tanker. As it sank, the vessel spilled 42 million litres of crude oil into the sea, causing one of the worst environmental catastrophes in history: the oil killed more than 250,000 birds, thousands of whales and other marine animals.

An evidently secondary concern for Donald Trump, who has granted the first authorisations since 2015 (the last company to receive them had been Royal Dutch Shell). The final green light for the project was announced on Tuesday 28 November by the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, following an initial approval received last July.

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Trump Administration Permits ENI to Drill for Oil Off Alaska dlvr.it/Q3NW1k

♥ 9 29 nov 2017 · Apri su X →

Barack Obama had banned drilling in the Arctic Ocean

The authorisation concerns the Beaufort Sea, at the heart of which sits the artificial platform Spy Island. An artificial island located 4.8 kilometres from the American coastline of Prudhoe Bay. According to the Associated Press, Eni will use "extended reach drilling techniques in order to reach the seabed."

Exploration is expected to begin within approximately one month. For the Arctic, for Alaska and for the United States, this represents a turning point: in the course of 2015, then-US president Barack Obama had banned drilling in the area. But Trump, in April of this year, ordered Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to review the regulations, with the express aim of authorising new offshore exploration. Despite opposition from environmental associations and indigenous organisations.

A threat to local communities, to wildlife and to the entire world

"The Washington administration," declared Kristen Monsell, a lawyer with the Center for Biological Diversity, "is placing extremely high risks on coastal communities and on wildlife by allowing foreign companies to drill in Alaskan waters." Without forgetting that, even if no accidents were to occur, the choice to press ahead with oil "pushes us even deeper into the climate crisis."

While the world has for years been striving to find ways to reduce CO2 emissions into the atmosphere, while tens of thousands of delegates attend the United Nations climate conferences every year and while millions of people work towards a transition to clean, renewable and sustainable energy, the United States is taking its first concrete steps against the tide. Heading straight towards the past. Hand in hand with a giant from our own nation, Italy.