In line with Snam’s multi-purpose approach, the gas transportation, storage and transformation businesses operate alongside the energy transition businesses, supported by the physical and IT infrastructure.

Snam transports natural gas throughout Italy via more than 33,000 km of pipelines. Managed by its subsidiary Snam Rete Gas, these provide widespread coverage of the country, ensuring continuity of supply in line with demand across the whole year and leveraging pipeline transportation, which is more efficient and reliable than road transport, as well as having less impact on the environment.

The company has 13 compressor plants (which will rise to 14 by 2026 with the new Sulmona power plant) located across the national network that serve to maintain constant gas pressure along its entire route to ensure the regular flow of gas. In addition, it has 48 maintenance centres, 8 districts and a dispatching centre, which controls and oversees the transportation network remotely using a data-driven and risk-based approach, monitoring the health of the assets and scheduling their maintenance on a predictive basis.

Through its subsidiary Stogit, Snam manages nine storage facilities that act in synergy with the Company’s other transportation and regasification infrastructures, contributing to the country’s energy security.

Indeed, storage activity is essential to manage fluctuations in demand linked to seasonal dynamics, representing a strategic solution against unforeseen events or unexpected increases in demand in response to particular weather conditions. In this way, it also ensures the availability of the necessary gas quantities in order to compensate for possible interruptions or reductions in non-European supplies, or to overcome temporary crises in the gas system.

In fact, the storage system stores gas during periods of lower demand (typically in the summer period) and then delivers it at times of peak demand or in the event of a shortage or momentary interruption of imports (typically in the winter period).

Regasification

Through its subsidiaries GNL Italia and FSRU Italia, Snam is also involved in the regasification of LNG, i.e. natural gas that, once extracted, is liquefied through a specific cooling process that significantly reduces its volume, ensuring easier transportation by LNG carriers.

Built in 1971, the terminal at Panigaglia (La Spezia) was the first operational regasification plant in Italy, consisting of 2 storage tanks of 50,000 cubic metres each, vaporisation plants and a landing stage for LNG carriers. With a view to promoting greater security and diversification of energy supplies, Snam has invested in floating regasification units or FSRUs (Floating Storage and Regasification Units) since 2022.

Specifically, the Golar Tundra floating unit (Piombino), purchased in May 2022, officially entered into commercial operation in July 2023 with the arrival of the first LNG carrier, while the BW Singapore, purchased in December 2023 and expected by the end of the year off the coast of Ravenna, is scheduled to enter into operation in the first half of 2025. Both floating regasification terminals have a maximum storage capacity of about 170 thousand cubic metres of liquefied natural gas and a nominal continuous regasification capacity of about 5 billion cubic metres per year.

Within the framework of the 2023-2027 Strategic Plan, Snam intends to invest in the connection works between the FSRUs and the network, in the infrastructure investments required for the relocation of the FSRU Golar Tundra, and in the commissioning of BW Singapore. 

Through Greenture, set up in 2017 to drive decarbonisation in mobility via the development of a network of C-LNG (Compressed and Liquefied Natural Gas) roadside refuelling stations, Snam has gradually extended the scope of its commitment to sustainable transport, and in 2022/2023 began creating midstream infrastructure for heavy transportation in the shipping and rail sectors. Moreover, by developing infrastructure to support the use of Bio C-LNG and hydrogen, Greenture also intends to foster the energy transition of off-grid industrial and civil users, confirming Snam as a key infrastructure operator for small-scale projects.

As part of the 2023-2027 Strategic Plan, Snam expects to continue developing small-scale LNG infrastructure and expanding the networks of LNG and bio-LNG stations, and, in the future, hydrogen stations; it also expects to adapt regasification terminals to allow them to support small-scale LNG activities and construct micro-liquefaction plants and coastal storage facilities.