AKEL N. Sylikiotis: The government is exploiting the natural gas issue for internal consumption purposes

 

Sunday 23 January 2022, “Haravgi” newspaper

The DISY-Anastasiades government in 2013 abandoned the strategy pursued by the Christofias government for the construction of a natural gas liquefaction terminal and turned to erratic policies, Neoklis Sylikiotis pointed out in statements to “Haravgi”.

Within this context, the government pinned all its hopes in the EastMed pipeline, and subsequently started talking about selling Cyprus’ gas to Egypt. This, he said, was due to the fact that the government had no strategic plan for the utilisation of natural gas and for the management of energy issues in general.

Regarding EastMed, N.Sylikiotis pointed out that such projects are decided by companies and not by governments and added that the government turned towards EastMed at a time when there were studies done from 2013 that showed that the most advantageous option was the construction of a natural gas terminal. He also said that the government is not taking into account the changing conditions and continues to cultivate these illusions and delusions.

The AKEL Political Bureau member pointed out that Italy, which was one of the contracting parties, did not participate in the fiestas that were organised in 2020 surrounding EastMed. The Israeli companies that have the rights to the Leviathan field are already exporting natural gas to Egypt as of the 1st of 2020, he said, adding that last year the Prime Minister of Greece was discussing with Egypt to change the route of the pipeline to go through Libya and Crete.

Furthermore, N.Sylikiotis underlined that the facts in relation to natural gas are changing also as a result of the new goals the EU has set for the adoption of Green Energy which will reduce the need for natural gas.

Regarding what needs to be done, Neoklis Sylikiotis said that AKEL had tabled proposals referring to making use of hydrocarbons for the solution of the Cyprus problem.

In addition, he stressed, a comprehensive strategic plan must be formulated, regional markets should be exploited, more should be invested in the introduction of renewable energy sources in Cyprus’ energy programme and the electricity interconnection should be promoted in order to bring Cyprus out of isolation, but also to enable it to export cheap electricity.

N.Sylikiotis added that it is also necessary to study how the confirmed natural gas deposits in the Aphrodite block can be exploited for power generation purposes in Cyprus, but also to reduce the heavy fines for pollutants.