Cypriot Energy Minister George Lakkotrypis said the quality of the reservoir found in Block 10 of Cyprus’ Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) allows for optimism that the recoverability will be very high.
The Minister, speaking at the 6th Eastern Mediterranean Gas Conference in Nicosia, also noted that more appraisal work is needed by ExxonMobil within the coming weeks.
ExxonMobil discovered huge quantities of natural gas ranging from 5 to 8 trillion square feet, the largest find offshore Cyprus.
Lakkotrypis said the discovery in the “Glafcos 1” well creates prospects to relook at Block 10 targets, adding that “Calypso” and “Aphrodite” fields, indicate the potential of the EEZ. The Minister said that Nicosia was looking forward to the upcoming drilling programme of Eni and Total, waiting at the same time the appraisal well for “Calypso” in Block 6.
Referring to monetization of the discoveries, he said that the Cyprus government has been maturing all of its options simultaneously, with the exception of “Aphrodite” field for which announcements were hopefully expected in the next few weeks.
For the rest of the fields, all the options were still open, including the EastMed gas pipeline, the construction of an LNG plant, floating LNG or any other technology, depending on a number of parameters.
He added the time has not yet come for the decision and that the big bet for the government was to make the right choice, when the moment comes.
On Block 7 exploration licensing, Lakkotrypis said that negotiations with Total and Eni were expected to begin within the next few days.
The Minister also referred to the East Mediterranean Gas Forum established a few months ago in Cairo between Eastern Mediterranean countries, saying that the group’s primary goal was to make the region more competitive in order to witness more hydrocarbons development and to bring gas more effectively to the markets.
He noted that Cyprus was currently halfway in this effort with some pretty good results, and that Cyprus was not only committed to cooperate with the region but also to lead the effort.
Speaking at the Conference, Executive Vice - President of Eni for Europe and Russia Carlo Vito Russo said new discoveries in the Cypriot EEZ added to the existing potential of the Eastern Mediterranean, reconfirming it as a world class hydrocarbon region.
Eni's Vice-President stressed the importance of synergies between the countries and companies in the region and referred to the existing infrastructure in Egypt as one of the ways of exploiting the deposits in the Cypriot EEZ, especially in blocks 10, 6 and 11.
“Clusterisation of discoveries located northwest of Zohr in the Cyprus EEZ will be a way to commercialize resources to Zohr facilities and the available LNG capacity in Egypt”, he said, adding that in this respect cooperation between operators and authorities was decidable.
He said that both “Calypso” and “Glafcos” fields confirmed the extension of the Zohr-like plays in the EEZ of Cyprus and that the full potential of the play within the Cyprus waters needed to be fully explored with new explorations and appraisal work.
“Only then we will know the volume of gas that we can add to the ones already discovered,” said Russo.
He also said that new finding represent important milestones, but partnership were needed in order to make Cyprus a key player in the potential east med hub.
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