Born in Milan, he has been Eni’s CEO since May 2014. He is a member of the General Council and of the Advisory Board of Confindustria and Director of Fondazione Teatro alla Scala. He is a member of the National Petroleum Council. He is one of the founding CEOs of the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative and was awarded the Atlantic Council’s Distinguished Business Leadership Award in 2022.

 

He joined Eni in 1981 as Oil & Gas field petroleum engineer and then became project manager for the development of North Sea, Libya, Nigeria and Congo. In 1990 he was appointed Head of Reservoir and operating activities for Italy. In 1994, he was appointed Managing Director of Eni’s subsidiary in Congo and in 1998 he became Vice President & Managing Director of Naoc, a subsidiary of Eni in Nigeria. From 2000 to 2001 he held the position of Executive Vice President for Africa, Middle East and China. From 2002 to 2005 he was Executive Vice President for Italy, Africa, Middle East, covering also the role of member of the board of several Eni subsidiaries in the area. In 2005, he was appointed Deputy Chief Operating Officer of the Exploration & Production Division in Eni. From 2006 to 2014 he was President of Assomineraria and from 2008 to 2014 he was Chief Operating Officer in the Exploration & Production Division of Eni. From 2010 to 2014 he held the position of Chairman of Eni UK. In 2012, Claudio Descalzi was the first European in the field of Oil&Gas to receive the prestigious “Charles F. Rand Memorial Gold Medal 2012” award from the Society of Petroleum Engineers and the American Institute of Mining Engineers. He is a Visiting Fellow at The University of Oxford. In 2014 he founded the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative together with other CEOs of major Oil & Gas companies to lead the industry’s response to climate change. In December 2015 he was made a member of the “Global Board of Advisors of the Council on Foreign Relations”. In December 2016 he was awarded an Honorary Degree in Environmental and Territorial Engineering by the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Rome, Tor Vergata. In May 2022 he was awarded by the Atlantic Council with the Distinguished Business Leadership Award for the extraordinary role he has played in the energy sector at an international level, for the technological transformation of the company aimed at complete decarbonization by 2050 and for his contribution to the new challenge of Italian and European energy security. He graduated in physics in 1979 from the University of Milan.