Italy: Powerful Man

More than any other man, elusive Enrico Mattei, 56, influenced the sustaining postwar boom known as the “Italian Miracle.” Boss of the state-owned oil and gas monopoly called E.N.I, (for Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi), he made it a power to reckon with in Italian politics, and was lionized by ordinary Italians for his daring, his nationalism—and his luck. He earned a U.S. Bronze Star as a war-time partisan. Elected to the Chamber of Deputies, he was put in charge of the sputtering state oil monopoly. Unwilling to see this remnant of Fascism dismantled, he disobeyed government orders to liquidate its money-losing properties, instead secretly went on drilling, and in the Po Valley discovered a huge natural-gas field. With fame and profits from the cheaply abundant fuel for boom. Mattei pushed E.N.I. into oil lands in Africa and Asia, laid plans for pipelines in Switzerland and Austria, started refineries behind the Iron Curtain, bankrolled Italy’s ruling Christian Democratic party, and became the most powerful man in Italy.

Last week Mattel’s luck gave out. As he was heading back from a business trip to Sicily, his private E.N.I jet ran into a soupy fog, crashed in flames ten miles south of Milan and killed the three men aboard.

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 producing synthetic rubber, cement, plastics, fertilizers.

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 pay.”

Power—for himself and Italy—might have been his goal, but not immense wealth. A policeman’s son, he made himself independently well-to-do in his 30s as a chemical manufacturer. He lived simply with his wife in a Rome hotel, drew expenses for his needs, donated his $30,400 salary to an orphanage. Without his intense one-man rule, E.N.I., which claims to be profitable but operates under a load of heavy debts, may well be in for difficult times.