In the late 1990s, the 41-year-old regional manager of Italian oil Major Eni slept under the bed with his child to avoid night shooting as longtime dictator Mobutu Sese Seko defeated Claudio Descalzi, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
“My wife was pregnant. Luckily she was able to leave this country. I was stuck with two girls,” he says. It was two years ago that he saw Italy again. “I was responsible for the remaining expatriates. Obviously, the last thing you think about is cash flow or operations.”
Rather than Descalzi’s first difficult overseas post, he is now in his 11th year as Eni’s CEO. After training as a physicist, he joined the oil company and soon found himself experiencing adventure and cool heads in “very challenging moments.”
He was in Libya in 1986 during US attacks in Tripoli and Benghazi. He was in 2006 when an armed robber attacked an ENI subsidiary in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, overseeing multiple deaths.
“It marks you very much,” he says. He remembers witnessing the despair of people caught up in extreme poverty and violence. “They don’t have the money, security, education, they’re lost. When trouble arises, no one takes care of them. That was a huge lesson I learned when I was really young,” he says.
Eighteen years after being abroad, mainly in Africa, Descalzi currently divides his time between Enni’s office in Rome and his hometown of Milan. There, the company has a vast complex covered with brown strips that resemble layers of Earth’s crust.
Soldiers from the Special Presidential Division run into the car of the central Kinshasa during the 1997 Congolese rebellion against longtime dictator Mobutu Sese Seko©Pascal Guyot/AFP/Getty Images
The tall and eloquent 70-year-old, he holds the perspective he has gained over the years, and says he has long rejected the ideas of the groups he met in Europe.
“I hate being politically right because I see it as a constraint and a barrier. It’s fake. …I hate mainstream,” he emphasises. “You say the same thing that everyone says. If you don’t say it, you’re not in the right club. This is a way to keep stagnant. It’s an empty box, the concept of empty. In life you have to challenge everything.”
What’s happening is not uncommon in the oil industry. Like many of his peers, Descargi aims for a story that casts a great oil as the main enemy of climate progress. “I believe that climate change is a big problem we have to solve. But if you want to solve the problem, if it’s about looking for an enemy first, I don’t think you really want to solve the problem. You want to find an enemy.”
He suggests that if the world wants to move beyond the fossil fuels that still supply 80% of its energy, not only will it stop using energy companies, but consumers will stop buying. He thinks this is particularly unlikely in the global South.
“Europe thinks the world is like Europe, and it’s not like Europe,” he says. “The (EU) is 5% of the (world’s) population.”
Descargi says he began to think seriously about climate change 12 years ago — before the 2015 Paris Agreement, before trying to limit global warming, before becoming CEO — driven by economics, not environmentalism.
He sees the oil industry as cycling between long-term relative stability and sudden impact. His appointment in May 2014 came as one such shock hit. The market share war between Saudi Arabia and the US had passed 70% crude oil prices by early 2016.
At the time, Ani’s reliance on oil and gas for profits was “over 100%, perhaps over 110%, as other companies lost their money.” He decided that the company needed to diversify.
Ennie is smaller than ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and Descargi says he understands inequality as important. “They have money, they have muscles. They’re strong political beings that we don’t have,” he says. “You really need to understand your weaknesses.”
In some respects, this forced him to take more risks. He added that the energy transition is “very useful” as the company is forced to rethink itself, forgetting its roots and facing a future of declining oil and gas revenues.
“In life, if you want to grow, you need to suffer. You have to change your skin, muscles, bones, bones. You have to evolve mentally continuously to manage yourself, your people, and your company’s future,” he says.
A Day of Claudio descalzi’s Life
I want time to warm up so get up very early between 5am and 5am and the first thing I do is read all the media I think is relaxing.
I’m not just reading energy issues. I read everything about geopolitics and what’s going on around the world. Because we exist in many countries, about 60 countries, so it’s good to have a view.
I need a routine like a guide for me.
I’m not a big deal in the morning. I drink coffee and usually go to the office from 7:30am to 7:45am. It’s an old habit.
I try to work out every day, whether I’m home or traveling. It’s probably my most consistent habit, I have a Pilates routine and when I can, I love going for walks.
I try to maintain my routine while traveling. I travel less than before, but it could be heavy. Previously, it took 1,200 hours a year, but now the range appears to be 600-700 hours. For countries like Indonesia, Angola and Mozambique, it is long distance. As they say, it’s important to go see that things really exist.
If you haven’t had lunch, take a short break to eat healthy food in the office. I will pack up work and go home by 7pm, have dinner and watch sports with my family. I’m passionate about both riding and racing bikes.
Some rivals looked at mergers and acquisitions and aggressive cost cuts, but Descalj took a different route. He strengthened his research and development, commissioned powerful supercomputers, and relied on scientists and university researchers. “We needed our own skills for the future,” he says. “I wanted to soften all the tools in my hands.
He brought capabilities within the company while other companies outsourced it. And he doubled his exploration, even if others were shrinking. “In general, energy companies don’t like exploration because they have so much risk. On average, they write off 70-80% of their spending,” he says. “But I like to go to places where there’s less competition.”
The sudden change has not stopped. Since 2014, Descalzi has led the ENI through more oil prices crashes, widening tensions between the US and China, leading to the Covid-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, higher inflation, and a new conflict in the Middle East.
Many European peers struggle to make money from cleaner energy, but as a result, some such as Shell and BP have reduced their regional operations as a result, but Descalzi’s strategy remains constant. ENI has put together future improvement companies, such as biofuel refineries, into cash-generating assets, such as service stations. Results: ESG-friendly but profitable units are attracting interest from private equity companies such as KKR with exceeded expectations.
Ask how long he expects he will remain at the top job. He shakes off the question. “I think it’s too early. We are in a precarious situation and it’s not easy to change (leaders) (leaders) often. But CEOs can’t stay forever.”
Then he smiles. “Energy comes from motivation. You can get very strong at 30 or 40, but if you don’t have a motivation you don’t enjoy going to work,” he says. “My motivation is to be outside the mainstream. It motivates me to be extreme. We can only break through the surface and grow when there are people who can do things differently.”
