Italian manufacturing is entering the latest energy crisis in far better shape than it did two decades ago, but Prometeia’s analysis of the fallout from the Strait of Hormuz closure shows the country’s underlying vulnerability to natural gas has barely shifted.
The closure, which took place in March 2026, triggered a historic shock to global energy markets. Brent crude has since climbed back into the $90 to $100 per barrel range, up from around $60 at the start of the year, while the EU’s TTF gas benchmark rose from just over €50/MWh to roughly €63 before settling below €60.
Prometeia notes that Italy’s exposure is defined less by oil, where its mix is broadly in line with European peers, than by gas, which accounted for 39% of national energy needs in 2025 compared with an EU average of 23%. Qatar alone supplied around a third of Italy’s LNG imports last year, equivalent to 11% of total gas consumption, leaving the country more exposed than France, Spain or the UK to any disruption in Qatari exports.
Prometeia’s research, using LMDI methodology applied to JRC-IDEES data, finds that Italian manufacturing has cut energy consumption from 34.6m toe in 2000 to 22.4m toe in 2019, even as value added fell by only around 10%. More than two-thirds of that reduction reflects genuine efficiency gains rather than reduced output, meaning production costs are now considerably less exposed to price shocks than in the early 2000s.
However, Prometeia cautions that the fuel mix underpinning this progress has not meaningfully improved. Natural gas’s share of manufacturing energy demand stood at 44.6% in 2023, down from 48.9% in 2019, but the decline was almost entirely concentrated in the chemical sector; strip that out and gas dependence has actually risen since 2000. Electricity’s share has also slipped since 2019, with petroleum products filling the gap instead, suggesting risk has migrated between hydrocarbons rather than diminishing.
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