A new gas discovery off Cyprus could speed up the exploitation of untapped resources and help secure Europe’s supplies, Cypriot Energy Minister Natasa Pilides said on Tuesday.
Italian giant Eni and France’s TotalEnergies on Monday announced a “significant gas discovery at the Cronos-1 well in Block 6 off the coast of Cyprus.”
Cyprus’ Energy Ministry said preliminary estimates showed the reservoir contains about 2.5 trillion cubic feet (70 billion cubic meters) of natural gas.
With Russia threatening to cut off gas supplies to the European Union, Nicosia is in talks with Brussels to become part of the bloc’s energy plan to reduce dependence on Moscow, Pilides told state radio.
The minister said she contacted Eni and TotalEnergies to “find ways to make the most of this discovery”.
The gas discovery was 165 kilometers off the southwest coast of Cyprus.
In 2018, Eni discovered the large Calypso-1 gas field in the same block, which contains an estimated 4.5 trillion cubic feet of gas.
Cyprus’ Energy Ministry said on Monday that further drilling had started in a new well called Zeus-1 in Block 6, where additional amounts of gas could be discovered.
Nicosia has granted drilling licenses for seven blocks to the Eni Total consortium.
The latest discovery comes on top of three other major gas discoveries, including the 4.5 trillion cubic foot Aphrodite well in Block 12, licensed to US firm Chevron, British Shell and Israeli partners.
Pilides estimated that it would take about three years to commercially exploit Aphrodite, with the gas likely to be exported to nearby Egypt.
In December, US giant ExxonMobil and Qatar Energy signed a deal for oil and gas exploration and production sharing off Cyprus, angering Turkey.
Gas exploration in the eastern Mediterranean was a sore point for the two nations due to competing claims to sea zone rights.
In February 2019, ExxonMobil and Qatar Energy discovered a massive natural gas deposit in Block 10 off Cyprus, the island’s largest find to date at an estimated five to eight trillion cubic feet.
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