Sixty years after the death of Mattei, the man who pursued Italian energy independence

It was the evening of

.

Above the skies of Bascapè, a town of less than two thousand inhabitants in north-eastern Pavia, some people see a small plane crash to the ground and explode in fire and smoke. 

No alarm signal, no SOS.

A dive and a roar, with the debris scattered all over the fields.

A "sudden flare", the witnesses defined it. 

Not just any aircraft: this was a French-made Morane-Saulnier 760.

Departed from Catania and directed to Milan Linate.

Three people on board: the pilot Imerio Bertuzzi, the American journalist William McHale and the president of Eni,

.

That was his private plane.

There are several hypotheses about what really happened on the evening of sixty years ago.

Starting with the film "The Mattei Case", directed by Francesco Rosi.

The director also made use of the advice of

, the journalist of the Ora di Palermo who disappeared from the mafia on September 16, 1970, precisely because, it is believed, he had discovered the dynamics and instigators of what seemed more an attack than an accident. . 

Last year, then, the journalist Michele Santoro reported the statements of the collaborator of justice Maurizio Avola: "The mafia men Francesco Mangion and Nitto Santapaola put the bomb on Mattei's plane, on behalf of Giuseppe Calderone at the request of Cosa Our American ”, it reads.

The one against Enrico Mattei would therefore have been a mafia attack.

With his autonomous policy,

, as he himself defined them, that is, the cartel formed by the world oil companies that dominated oil production throughout the planet in terms of turnover from the 1940s to the 1973 crisis.

Handle

Enrico Mattei

Mattei, however, had also been

, the Organization de l'Armée Secrète for its support for the cause of Algerian independence.

We need to take a step back 17 years from that tragic evening in 1962 to understand how much the death of Mattei put an end to the

project . 

Nominated in 1945, immediately after the war,

, the oil company created by fascism, with the task of liquidating it, Enrico Mattei decides to keep it alive. 

His choice is due to the discovery of a report that states that the Po Valley hides important energy resources.

After resuming drilling, Agip finds mainly

. 

It was a revolution, because this gas made it possible to supply the industry with low-cost energy. 

For Mattei, that was nothing more than the starting point for the creation of

, at the service of the State and of the Italians, which then gave him the opportunity to set relations with oil-producing countries on a new basis. 

His policy, which was based on right intuitions and which he carried out with extraordinary energy and entrepreneurial spirit, triggered the angry reaction of those who felt their interests affected. 

That it was precisely these who decreed Mattei's death is

.

Despite two investigations in Pavia and the parallel trials in Sicily, the names and faces of principals and executors of what happened on October 27, 1962

.