Eni seeks to cash in on its oil exploration lead

London

ONE of the most cherished assets held by Italy's largest oil company, Eni SpA, isn't a refinery or an oilfield - it sits inside a building in the small town of Ferrera Erbognone near Milan: one of the world's fastest super- computers.

The giant machine, used to generate detailed views of oil reservoirs buried thousands of metres underground, is part of Eni's bet on exploring for new fields. In the last decade, the company has spent US$41 billion drilling dozens of wells from Mozambique to Pakistan and Angola.

The investment has paid off. Since 2005, Eni has found the equivalent of about 18 billion barrels of oil, more than double the second-best performer among major oil groups, Norway's Statoil ASA, ac…