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| Eni's Chief Exploration Officer Luca Bertelli poses at the headquarters in San Donato near Milan, Italy, September 15, 2017. REUTERS/Alberto Lingria |
Stephen Jewkes
MILAN (Reuters) - Italian oil major Eni (ENI.MI) is betting billions on Luca Bertelli being able to achieve something he’s been doing since he was nine years old: spotting things others overlook.
The geologist, who heads Eni’s exploration team, began collecting rocks as a boy growing up in Tuscany, developing a curious eye that eventually led him to discover two of the world’s biggest gas fields this century.
His latest success, the Zohr field off Egypt, sits in an area that Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) pored over for years before Bertelli persuaded his boss to embark on a drilling program that turned up the Mediterranean’s largest gas discovery.
