Maugeri became Eni’s youngest director in 2000, when at 36 he was named Director of Strategy and Development. In 2010 Maugeri was named Executive Chairman of Polimeri Europa, the company managing Eni’s petrochemical activities. The appointment of Maugeri as Eni’s head of strategy coincided with the development of aggressive plans for growth that resulted in the period of greatest development for the company: from 2000 to 2005 Eni increased its hydrocarbons production by 50 per cent while corporate profits reached their highest level in history. In 2007 Maugeri launched a new strategy for renewable energy. He engineered the relaunch of the historic Istituto Donegani, with a new focus on renewable energy and a strategic alliance between Eni and MIT - concluded by Maugeri with the current U.S. Secretary of EnergyErnest Moniz. During his chairmanship of Polimeri Europa Maugeri conceived and engineered the largest green chemistry project in the world – the industrial reconversion of the Porto Torres site. Whereas Eni’s petrochemical activities had been operating at a loss for several decades, Maugeri’s strategy of radical discontinuity allowed it to obtain a modest but significant positive cash flow from operating activities.
Writings
Maugeri’s views and predictions have been expressed in a series of articles for several major international newspapers and magazines – including The New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Foreign Affairs, Newsweek, Science, Scientific American, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and The National Interest. In particular, Maugeri is one of the leading supporters of the view according to which the world does not run the risk of running out of oil, and for this reason he has been attacked on many occasions by proponents of the “peak oil” thesis . In his book The Age of Oil: the Mythology, History, and Future of the World’s Most Controversial Resource Maugeri predicted an imminent collapse of oil prices, which occurred in the second half of 2008. In the same book he predicted the development of unconventional oil and gas resources thanks to the advent of new technologies – including hydraulic fracturing. In Beyond the Age of Oil: The Myths, Realities, and Future of Fossil Fuels and Their Alternatives Maugeri argues that by 2020 a technological breakthrough will shake the solar industry and permanently alter the energy landscape. Two essays published by Maugeri during his stay at Harvard have sparked a heated debate at the international level. In these essays, Maugeri argues that the incessant growth of global oil production capacity is generally underestimated, and this – combined with modest growth in oil demand – could lead to an oil price collapse in the course of this decade. The second of these studies – “The Shale Oil Boom: A U.S. Phenomenon”, based on an unprecedented analysis of 4,000 shale oil wells, concludes that the United States could become the world's biggest oil producer by 2017. At the same time, however, the study indicates that the shale oil and gas revolution will not be replicable in the rest of the world – let alone in Europe – due to the high drilling intensity required.
