Word: matteis
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...death of Italian Oil Czar Enrico Mattei left the Italian government with the choice of dismembering the state-owned E.N.I. oil and gas monopoly that he ran as a personal fief, or choosing a tough successor to carry on Mattei's expansionary and controversial policies. Premier Amintore Fanfani last week did neither. To succeed Mattei as head of the "state within the state'' Fanfani selected E.N.I.'s scholarly vice president. Professor Marcello Boldrini, a mere 72, and Mattel's lifelong loyal friend...
Boldrini predictably vowed to continue Mattei's policies, which involved buying huge shipments of oil from the Russians, offering cut-rate competition for private Western oil majors for drilling and refining rights in Africa and Asia, and aggressively tightening E.N.I.'s grasp on the Italian economy through interests ranging from fertilizers to cement. But Boldrini is neither young nor dynamic and much prefers his off time job as statistics professor at Rome University. He is being referred to as an "interim Pope...
Cracking Oil. Autocratic by temperament, Mattei had no hesitation about making powerful enemies. He took on giant international oil companies, first in Italy, then abroad. He cracked their traditional 50-50 profits split with the oil-rich Middle East countries; by taking only 25%, he won concessions to drill in Iran, India, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Somalia and the Sudan. Italy's business leaders fumed as Mattei, building an empire worth $2 billion, poached on more and more preserves of free enterprise. E.N.I. now owns motels, cafes, a newspaper (Milan's Il Giorno), an atom power plant and factories...
Most of all, Western leaders feared Matters cozying up to the Communists. In a deal that made E.N.I. the biggest Western buyer of Communist oil, Mattei contracted to buy 12 million tons of Russian crude from 1961 to 1965. To critics who charged that he was helping the Reds and making Italy dependent on a capricious flow from Russia. Mattei protested that he was determined to buy from the cheapest sources...
Lowering Prices. A xenophobic man with few intimates, Mattei believed that the great foreign oil companies were determined to keep Italy from developing sources of her own so that they could charge higher prices. "The policy I am following," he boasted, "has permitted me not only to free my country from the grip of the cartel, but to benefit from prices lower than those which our neighbors...