ENI has close ties to the authoritarian government in Egypt, which has been accused of human rights violations such as politically-motivated arrests and the use of "morality" charges to detain women. In 2016, ENI's Chief Exploration Officer Luca Bertelli stated that ENI has "a historical, long-term, win-win relationship with Egypt". The Italian government, which has de facto control of ENI, works with the government in Cairo on issues of migration and security.

Egypt will host the upcoming COP27 conference, which has been described by human rights advocates as a "carceral climate summit", reinforcing the overlapping environmental and social impacts of ENI's continued collaboration with the Egyptian government.

The accelerating warming of Earth has long been a consequence of ENI’s operations: According to the Carbon Majors Report 2017, ENI accounted for 0.6% of the world’s entire industrial greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions between 1988 and 2015, or 5.32 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. Following research conducted by the Climate Accountability Institute in 2020, ENI ranked 12th for GHG emissions between 1965 and 2018 among fossil fuel companies with assets, operations, production, or sales in the United States. These findings make ENI one of the world’s biggest contributors to global heating and therefore climate change.

ENI has no intention to stop emitting greenhouse gases any time soon. During a 2022 industry event in the UAE, ENI’s CEO Claudio Descalzi referred to decarbonisation as an “ideology” and underlined the importance of carbon capture technology; the company’s Road to 2050 net-zero plan relies on ENI being able to capture and store approximately 50 million tonnes of CO2 emissions annually by 2050. Such technology does not yet exist: In September 2022, the International Energy Agency reported that CO2 capture technology is in its infancy, with just two small-scale plants in operation that store captured carbon underground. By relying on unproven solutions, ENI’s net-zero plans risk exacerbating climate change for decades to come.