Portal:Energy/Selected biography/13

Enrico Mattei (1906 - 1962) was an Italian public administrator. After World War II he enlarged and reorganized Agip, the Italian Petroleum Agency established by the former Fascist regime, to create Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi (ENI), the National Fuel Trust. He also introduced the international principle whereby a country that owns oil reserves receives 75% of the profits from their exploitation, and helped break the oligopoly of the 'Seven Sisters' that dominated the mid 20th century oil industry.

Enrico Mattei was born in Acqualagna, the son of a carabiniere. At the age of 24 he moved to Milan, where he worked in various jobs and later joined the Resistenza and became a well known partisan. In 1945, the Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale gave him instructions to close Agip; instead, he turned the company into one of the nation's major economic assets. When ENI was formed in 1953, subsuming Agip, Mattei became its president, then also the administrator and the general director. To break the oligopoly of the oil majors, Mattei initiated agreements with the poorest countries of the Middle East and with those of the Soviet bloc. He agreed a 50–50 partnership for extracting oil in Tunisia and Morocco, and offered Iran and Egypt that the risks of oil exploration would be entirely ENI's.

Behind the scenes, Mattei secretly financed the independence movement against colonialist France in the Algerian War, and was also alleged to have engaged in extensive bribery, especially of politicians and journalists. His death in a plane crash is claimed by some to have been murder. In 2000, the Trans-Mediterranean Pipeline was named after him.