Natural gas production forecast in Italy 2021-2025

Natural gas production in Italy was around 3.3 billion cubic meters in 2021. However, the domestic production of this fossil fuel was projected to increase to six billion cubic meters by 2025 and to seven in the following years.
In the past years, natural gas production in Italy decreased from over eight billion cubic meters in 2012.

Behind this forecast

This 2022 forecast was made after the decision of the Italian government to increase the number of natural gas drilling sites in the country. Over the last decades, the number of onshore and offshore natural gas producing wells decreased by half, but this trend is expected to be reversed. Natural gas has a key role in the decarbonization strategy of Italy, since it is the fossil fuel with the lowest carbon dioxide emission per kilowatt-hour of energy produced. Besides environmental reasons, driving the Italian energy policy is the current energy crisis. In 2022, Italy was still strongly reliant on natural gas supply from other countries, mainly Algeria, which replaced Russian imports of natural gas.

Natural gas prices

The natural gas price for households in Italy reached an all-time high in 2022. After a small decrease, the price is expected to increase again because of the lack of flexibility in Algerian natural gas exports and the start of winter. Even though Italian natural gas storage facilities were over 90 percent full in autumn 2022, no policy regulates the supply of natural gas from Italian reserves.