CAIRO (AP) — Italy’s prime minister held talks in Libya on Saturday with officials from the country’s west-based government focusing on energy and migration, top issues for Italy and the European Union. During the visit, the two countries' oil companies signed a gas deal worth $8 billion — the largest single investment in Libya’s energy sector in more than two decades. 

Libya is the second North African country that Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, three months in office, visited this week. She is seeking to secure new supplies of natural gas to replace Russian energy amid Moscow's war on Ukraine. She previously visited Algeria, Italy’s main supplier of natural gas, where she signed severalmemorandums.