Italian energy company Eni has launched a new biofuels project in the Lushne region of south-central Albania, one of the country's most important agricultural regions. BalkanEngineer.com learned this from a statement made by Francesco Italiano, Eni's CEO in Albania, during a meeting with Albanian government representatives held on 29 April this year.

The project will be carried out in partnership with the Agricultural University of Tirana, which will conduct agronomic research by cultivating several hectares of land in the Lushne area. The aim is to assess the potential of local crops for biofuel production through sustainable agro-energy practices.
"Lushne has a long tradition in agriculture and is a strategic location for such a project," said Italiano in a video posted on Facebook. He stressed that the initiative had been discussed as early as July 2024, when Eni and the Albanian government were discussing the possibilities of using degraded or unusable land to develop agro-energy feedstocks.
Eni has been active in the Albanian energy market for several years. In December 2019, the company signed a production sharing agreement in the Dumre block, located in mainland Albania, holding 100% of the shares. Following geophysical surveys in 2021 and 2022, the company originally planned to start preliminary work in January 2024, but postponed it until December that year.

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