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Who Is Claudio Descalzi, Eni’s CEO?

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Last updated: November 2, 2026

Claudio Descalzi is the Chief Executive Officer and General Manager of Eni, Italy’s state-linked integrated energy major. He has run the company since May 2014 and was reappointed in May 2026 to a record fifth term, through 2029 — one of the longest tenures of any major oil and gas CEO.

Current Position

Descalzi has served as Eni’s CEO and General Manager since May 2014. Eni’s board confirmed his reappointment on May 7, 2026, days after shareholders approved a government-backed board slate at the company’s May 6, 2026 annual meeting, with 51.38% support among participating shareholders. The reappointment, and an accompanying increase in his 2026 pay package, came despite proxy adviser ISS recommending shareholders vote against the compensation plan.

Education

Descalzi holds a degree in physics from the University of Milan, which he completed in 1979.

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Career Timeline

Year	Company / Unit	Position
1981	Eni	Joined as a reservoir/petroleum engineer
1994	Eni Congo	Managing Director
1998	Nigerian Agip Oil Company (NAOC)	Vice President & Managing Director
2005	Eni Exploration & Production Division	Deputy Chief Operating Officer
2008	Eni Exploration & Production Division	Chief Operating Officer
2010–2014	Eni UK	Chairman
2014–present	Eni	Chief Executive Officer & General Manager (reappointed 2017, 2020, 2023, 2026)

Previous Companies

Descalzi’s entire career has been spent inside the Eni group. Before becoming CEO, he held senior roles at Eni’s Congo and Nigeria (NAOC) country units and led Eni UK as chairman, before rising to Chief Operating Officer of Eni’s global Exploration & Production division from 2008 to 2014 — the role that put him in charge of the upstream portfolio immediately before taking the top job.

Major Energy Projects

Descalzi’s upstream career and CEO tenure overlap with several of Eni’s largest discoveries and developments:

Zohr (Egypt): The supergiant gas field Eni discovered in 2015, early in his CEO term, remains one of the Mediterranean’s largest gas finds.
Coral Sul and Coral North FLNG (Mozambique): Eni’s floating LNG platforms in the Rovuma Basin, part of the company’s push into deepwater African gas.
Baleine (Côte d’Ivoire): Eni’s first development in the country and Africa’s first carbon-neutral upstream project; sanctioned for its third expansion phase in May 2026 under Descalzi’s leadership, with a 10% stake later sold to Azerbaijan’s SOCAR.
Portfolio restructuring: Descalzi has overseen Eni’s “dual exploration” model — pairing fast, low-cost exploration with rapid monetization — and the carve-out of Eni’s energy-transition businesses into separately capitalized units, Enilive and Plenitude, bringing in outside investors such as KKR and (reportedly) Ares.

Board Memberships

Descalzi’s board role is as a director and CEO of Eni S.p.A. No other current external public-company board memberships are documented in primary Eni or regulatory filings reviewed for this profile.

Current Responsibilities

As CEO and General Manager, Descalzi sets Eni’s strategic direction, including the company’s 2026-2030 Strategic Plan, upstream portfolio optimization (such as the Baleine stake sale to SOCAR), and the continued build-out of Eni’s low-carbon businesses, biofuels and early-stage fusion research through its stake in Commonwealth Fusion Systems.

Legal Matters

Descalzi and other Eni executives faced corruption allegations in Italy tied to Eni’s 2011 acquisition of the OPL 245 oil licence in Nigeria. A Milan court acquitted Descalzi, Eni, Shell and other defendants on all counts in March 2021; Italian prosecutors dropped their appeal in July 2022, and the Milan Court of Appeal rejected a related civil claim from Nigeria in November 2022. A separate Nigerian licence dispute brought by Malabu Oil & Gas was dismissed by Nigeria’s Court of Appeal in Abuja in May 2025.

Net Worth

No reliable public estimate of Claudio Descalzi’s net worth is available from Forbes, Bloomberg or comparable sources. Public filings indicate a personal shareholding in Eni of roughly 0.02% of the company’s shares, though this figure may not reflect the most current filing.