Italian Industry Minister Claudio Scajola on Wednesday called a special meeting with Italy's leading energy organizations after Russia had reduced natural gas exports to meet its own domestic demand.

Representatives from ENI, ENEL and Edison will meet with the minister here on Thursday, the Italian ANSA News Agency reported.

A statement from the Italian Industry Ministry explained that it was necessary "to review the current situation and the efficiency of measures which have already been decided and those which need to be adopted."

At the moment Italy could count on strong gas reserves but it needed to take action in order to guarantee Italy's energy for the future, Scajola said

An ENI report showed that the previous day there had been a 5.4 percent drop in gas supplies from Russia which resulted in a 1 percent decline in supplies to Italy.

Russian giant Gazprom, which supplies a quarter of Europe's gas and which is the major exporter to Italy, announced on Wednesday that it was cutting back on exports to parts of western Europe because of domestic demand created by a severe cold snap.

This is the second time in less than a month that natural gas supplies from Russia have been reduced.

Scajola added that Italy needs to reduce its dependency on imported fuels and energy, review its moratorium on nuclear power, and diversify its gas sources.

The current problem, Scajola explained, "is that it is particularly cold in Europe and the whole continent is consuming more gas".

On Jan. 1, Russia cut neighbouring Ukraine's gas supplies after Kiev had rejected Moscow's demand for a fourfold price rise, resulting in a reduction in gas reaching western Europe. Moscow accused the Ukraine of siphoning off gas from the pipelines which run through that country to supply Europe.

The deadlock continued for three days before the two countries resolved their spat.

Italy, holding some deposits of its own, is heavily reliant on gas imports of which 24 billion cubic meters comes from Russia annually. It also gets some 20 billion cubic meters a year from Algeria and 8 billion from Libya.

Most of the remaining 16 billion cubic meters is piped from Norwegian and Dutch fields in the North Sea.

At the height of winter Italy consumes around 380 million cubic meters of gas every weekday and about 500 million in the weekend.

Source: Xinhua