The Regia Marina COULD have been a force to be reckoned with in the central Mediterranean... technologically the ships were excellent. As long as they had fuel. A-H had oil, Germany had lots and lots of coal... just a matter of getting it to them.Lybia is very vunerable to the british, the Reggia Marina could easily see themselves on the bottom of the medditeranean now
Also the Italians had the advantage of possessing (however tenuously, in the case of Libya) a shore on both sides of the Mediterranean, making for shorter sorties and less fuel usage.