The Prime Minister’s decision to launch exceptional seismic surveys in two offshore blocks southwest of Crete and south of the Peloponnese represents a very positive milestone for the country’s medium-term energy self-sufficiency and security. Attempts to revive the exploration and production (R&P) of hydrocarbons in Greece, shaken by law 4001/2011, when Greek legal claims based on the median line against Libya were demarcated, went through forty waves.

While the geopolitical benefits of using the R&D process were clear, with Cyprus being the most prominent example, there were setbacks, delays and harrowing licensing procedures which, combined with the mobilization of organized minorities, eventually drove investors out of the country. At the same time, the misconception was cultivated that either R&D costs would be borne by the state, or revenues would be very low compared to the environmental risk and climate costs of finding and extracting hydrocarbons.

In fact, the cost of the investment falls solely on the hydrocarbon companies, which will be asked to share any potential profits with local communities and the state. Of the millions of offshore drillings carried out around the world, only one caused a serious environmental accident in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, but this did not diminish or change the area’s importance as one of the most important oil producing provinces in the United States. USA.

Every U.S. president since 2010, regardless of their diametrically opposed views on climate change, has done everything possible to keep oil companies in the Gulf of Mexico rather than drive them out, apparently by tightening the environmental permitting framework now in place everywhere. developed world, including Greece.

There is a city and a region in our country (Prinos) where for decades oil has been extracted under water and a short distance from the coast, without any environmental problems and without hindering the economic and tourist boom of Kavala.

With regard to the climate costs of mining, it must be made clear that the shortest path to reducing greenhouse gas emissions is to replace oil and lignite with natural gas. Natural gas is an intermediate fuel that will make the multi-year transition to a zero-carbon electrified system safer and less costly.

If there is one lesson to be learned from the energy crisis caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it is that there is no such thing as instantaneous natural gas production, and that a total phase-out of hydrocarbons is premature and extremely dangerous for the energy industry. security perspective.

The current crisis conditions have also accelerated the Prime Minister’s decision in April 2022 to accelerate exploration to identify potential drilling targets in 5 priority offshore blocks, with the first drilling in Greece expected in 2023 after a nearly 25-year hiatus in the Ioannina area. We have more earthquakes in a few months of 2022 than Greece has in decades (excluding the PGS earthquakes in 2014).

With respect to Crete and the southern maritime zones, which have been demarcated as part of the claimed Greek continental shelf/EEZ since 2011, the conduct of seismographic surveys by the Exxon/HELLENiQ ENERGY consortium is the first exercise of sovereign rights in maritime zones where our sovereign rights are being challenged through the Turkish-Libyan MoU .

The exercise of these rights strengthens the position of Greece in view of the possible negotiations on the final delimitation of the maritime zones of a particular area, together with Egypt and Libya, when Libya receives a government that will have both domestic and international legitimacy to enter into such negotiations with Greece and only with Greece.

When these negotiations fail, they will be based not on the enormity of the memorandum signed by the then – under siege – Tripoli government with Turkey, but on the acquis of the 2020 Greco-Egyptian demarcation and UNCLOS. which it has signed (but not ratified) in Libya since 1984. Until such a government emerges, Greece cannot follow the progress of Turkish claims and exercise its rights in the demarcated area of ​​legal claims for 11 years and much more in the demarcated EEZ after 2020. .

* Dr. Theodoros Tsakiris is Associate Professor of Geopolitics and Energy Policy at the University of Nicosia.