Address by the Minister of Energy,
Mr Y. Lakkotrypis, at the Global Offshore
Technology Conference and Exhibition,
in Limassol.
Optimistic for more natural gas discoveries.
I feel truly honoured to be joining you today and
I wish to thank the organisers for giving me the
opportunity to address today’s Global Offshore
Technology Conference and Exhibition, an event
which focuses on the latest market and technology trends related to the exploration, drilling,
production, processing and marketing of hydrocarbons in our region.
I am confident that the views and suggestions of
the distinguished speakers as regards both the
energy developments in general, as well as the
energy strategy in Cyprus and the broader Eastern
Mediterranean region, will prove to be useful tools
for setting our next steps.
There are some basic elements that come to mind
when we think about Cyprus: an island state in the
Eastern Mediterranean, at the crossroads of Europe, Asia and Africa, a member state of the European Union at its south-eastern corner, a country
affected by its historically turbulent neighbourhood, an island recently blessed, together with its
neighbours, with the discovery of hydrocarbons,
and, sadly, the last divided EU member state.
The very promising potential of hydrocarbon
resources in the Eastern Mediterranean was assessed by the US Geological Survey in 2010. For
the Levantine Basin, a mean of about 1.7 billion
barrels of recoverable oil and a mean of 122 Tcf of
recoverable natural gas were estimated, whereas
for the Nile Delta Basin the corresponding estimates rose to a mean of about 1.8 billion barrels of
recoverable oil and a mean of 223 Tcf of recoverable natural gas.
4 |CyprusGasNews
Besides Cyprus, which I will discuss in a minute, as of
today nearly 40 Tcf of natural gas have been discovered in offshore Israel, and, according to Lebanese
officials, preliminary surveys in Lebanon indicate
reserves of about 30 Tcf of natural gas. Moreover,
there are encouraging indications for oil discoveries
in the offshore area of Cyprus. It is therefore evident
that the Eastern Mediterranean is quickly becoming
a new and very promising frontier region for oil and
gas production.
Following the first licensing round in 2007, Cyprus
signed an Exploration and Production Sharing Contract with Noble Energy International Ltd, granting
them an exploration license for Block 12. Israel’s
Delek and Avner also joined this license in February
2013. In February 2012 a second licensing round was
launched. As a result, Cyprus entered into another
five Exploration and Production Sharing Contracts,
granting three exploration licenses to Eni and KOGAS
for Blocks 2, 3 and 9, in January 2013 and two exploration licenses to Total E&P Cyprus for Blocks 10 and
11, in February 2013.
December 2011 was a milestone month. The result of
the first exploration well in Block 12 showed a significant natural gas discovery of 5 to 8 Tcf, with a mean
gross estimate of 7 Tcf. The subsequent appraisal
process in October 2013, confirmed the presence of
an estimated gross resources of the field in the range
of 3.6 to 6 Tcf of natural gas, with a mean of approximately 5 Tcf. The Aphrodite structure in Block 12
represents the third largest field discovered to date
in the deepwater Levantine Basin. The exploration
activity will continue in 2014, with one more exploration well for gas in Block 12 and possibly another
appraisal well in the Aphrodite field.
At the same time, exploration activities are also well
underway in the other five licensed Blocks and the
first exploration drilling is expected in the third quarter of 2014. We are, in fact, cautiously optimistic for
further discoveries, since the preliminary evalua