A whistleblower who helped build a fuel-delivery forecasting system says its risk alerts pushed Italian utilities and industrial buyers to pay millions of euros more for supplies that were not in immediate danger. Zofia Jankowski, a former engineer at software firm Lanterra Logic, told The Plausible Post that the platform repeatedly marked Adriatic deliveries as high risk during this summer’s oil-market jitters, without giving clients a clear reason.
The software, called FaroCast, is used by 14 fuel buyers to track cargoes and plan purchases. Jankowski said she is speaking publicly because she believes the system’s warnings were treated as operational facts, even when shipments were already booked or fuel had reached port. The company disputes her account and says customers make their own purchasing decisions.
When alerts drove buying
Jankowski, 38, said a FaroCast risk score for deliveries to Ravenna, Ancona and Trieste jumped from low to severe in late June, despite no corresponding change in the delivery schedules she could see. The platform drew on shipping updates and market news, she said, but its alerts did not show which factors had driven a particular score.
The consequences were costly. Three publicly owned utilities paid about €1.9 million more than their scheduled contract prices for emergency purchases between June and August, according to invoices and purchasing summaries reviewed by the newspaper. The figures do not establish that FaroCast caused every purchase, but Jankowski said its warnings were cited in buyer discussions she supported.
“People were being asked to act on a number they could not challenge, while the system gave them no useful explanation,” Jankowski said. She has given a parliamentary energy committee a written account and says she kept dated screen captures from the period; the committee has not announced a hearing date.
“The alert became the decision, even though it was meant to be only a prompt.” — Zofia Jankowski, former Lanterra Logic engineer
Rúben Pinho, an energy procurement adviser who reviewed the purchase figures for the newspaper, said the premiums were consistent with buyers entering the spot market at a moment when prices had risen on concern about possible disruption to Middle Eastern shipping. “A warning can have a price of its own,” he said. “If several buyers move at once, they compete for the same cargoes.”
The company’s defence
Lanterra Logic said by email that FaroCast “does not direct or execute purchases” and that its forecasts draw on multiple sources, including shipping data and market prices. The firm said it had found no evidence that the software malfunctioned, and that clients could inspect the assumptions behind each alert. It did not answer questions about the three utilities’ purchases or provide test results for the June alerts.
Mary Harrison, a software-risk researcher who was not involved in the product, said the issue was whether a buyer could distinguish a genuine supply interruption from a rapid change in market sentiment. A score that blends the two, she said, can prompt precautionary orders without telling users what they are responding to.
The energy committee’s secretariat confirmed it had received Jankowski’s account and said members would decide whether to request evidence from the company. Italy’s fuel buyers are now entering the winter planning period, when utilities typically secure supplies months ahead. Pinho said firms should record why emergency orders are placed, rather than treating a software alert as proof that a cargo is about to disappear.
