Libya to Reassess Italy Oil Deals Amid Government Row

Libya is reassessing some of its oil deals with Italian energy company Eni SpA (E) as tensions mount between the two nations following the new Italian government’s high-level appointment of a right-wing politician who has angered the North African country in recent years.

Conservative Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian billionaire, was sworn in for a third stint as prime minister Thursday along with his appointed ministers, who include Roberto Calderoli, of the anti-immigrant Northern League party that is part of Berlusconi’s coalition government.
Calderoli, who has been appointed with the task of reducing government bureaucracy, provoked protests in the Libyan coastal city of Benghazi in 2006 after appearing on Italian television with a T-shirt that made fun of the Prophet Mohammed. Several Libyans died during those protests. Calderoli later resigned as reforms minister following the incident.

Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, a son of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, warned in early May of “catastrophic consequences” in relations between Libya and Italy if Calderoli took a role in the new Italian government.

Calderoli further inflamed Muslims inside and outside Italy in 2007 after he threatened to walk a pig, a detested animal in Islam that is seen as being too dirty to touch or to consume, near the site of where a mosque was to be built. Meanwhile, Reuters news service reported Friday Libya has told the Italian government it will no longer help stem the tide of illegal African migrants to Italy and other European states because of insufficient support from Europe, including Rome.

Buoyed by high oil tax revenues and its reentry into the international community in recent years after giving up its nuclear program, Libya hasn’t been shy about asserting itself on the international stage.

Rigzone