Sicily: a Geopolitical Oil Rig in the Mediterranean Sea

In the Cold War, Sicily committed to economic activities related to agriculture for centuries, it turned into a "oil rig" in the heart of the Mediterranean Sea. This essay seeks to reconstruct the historical process through which the island became part of the international system of trade of hydrocarbons (extraction, refining and marketing). In Sicily, the formation of an oil industry extraction and refining coincided with the Iranian political crisis which had led, in May 1951, to the closing of the Abadan refinery. The event was a shock to the oil multinationals who began to look for new oil fields and build up new refinery plants in areas close to major centers of energy supplies in Middle East. Among these the Exxon Oil Company and the Gulf Oil Company began to invest in building up refinery plants and exploiting oil fields in eastern part of Sicily, trasforming the island in an important crossroads of the Mediterranean oil traffic.The Sicily didn't become an emirate. However, for more than a decade, the Black Gold represented an economic chance as well as a political opportunity to build relationships with the Arab countries and North Africa. Opportunity that would later be fully grasped by the National Agency of Hydrocarbons (ENI) of Enrico Mattei.By focusing on oil, strategic raw material, the essay will return a different image of Sicily inserted in the broader context of the "Greater Mediterranean", that is a geopolitical space that stretches from the shores of Iran to the Strait of Gibraltar, privileged area for the exchange of people, cultures and products among Europe, Asia and Africa