In the weeks after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, Claudio Descalzi, CEO of Italian energy major Eni (ENI.MI) , embarked on a whirlwind of trips to gas suppliers in Africa. The visits included meetings with officials in Algeria in February plus talks in Angola, Egypt and Republic of Congo in March, with Descalzi often accompanied by senior Rome officials, according to company and government releases. State-controlled Eni and Italy were able to leverage existing supply relationships with those nations to secure extra gas to replace a large part of the volumes it received from its top supplier Russia. It’s a nimble shift that many European countries have been unable to perform as Vladimir Putin’s war jolts the continent into an alternate reality. Take Germany. An economic powerhouse and long a byword for prudent planning, it has been caught wholly unprepared. It’s on […]