British navy oil rumours ‘barmy’

A BRITISH High Commission spokesman in Cyprus yesterday said the idea of a Royal Navy ship exploring for oil in Cypriot waters was “utterly barmy”.

Responding to claims in the Cypriot media over the weekend that the HMS Enterprise was “looking for oil in the sea area off Limassol, near the Akrotiri Sovereign Base Area”, the British Ministry of Defence categorically denied the reports.

Richard Buckland, MoD spokesman in London, yesterday told the Cyprus Mail “I am not aware of any Royal Navy vessel which has ever had the facility for prospecting for oil. The Royal Navy does not possess the capability to explore for oil”.

The Cypriot Defence Minister, Koullis Mavronicolas, did not directly accuse the Enterprise, but called on Britain “to tell us exactly what the Enterprise was doing and to explain all the facts”.

The rumour first arose in the Phileleftheros newspaper, who claimed to have made the discovery by ‘tracking the course followed by the ship’.

“Enterprise spent February 7-10 in Limassol Port and then it left at a speed of 12 km/h, which reduced to 4-6 km/h when it reached waters off Akrotiri. The ship’s behaviour indicates it was searching the seabed, possibly with the aim of finding oil”, the paper wrote.

According to the MoD, HMS Enterprise is a survey vessel, which conducts routine oceanographic surveys. She is able to collect information on all aspects of the environment, from the seabed to the upper atmosphere. Enterprise is capable of showing the most minute detail of the seabed, with the information used to make the admiralty charts, used by all mariners.

The Royal Navy website says that “the survey of the deep waters of the eastern Mediterranean will see the ship conducting a combination of long survey lines and stationary oceanographic dips down to 3000m”.

Buckland added that survey ships will often slow down whilst carrying out surveys and the speed of a ship depends on a number of factors.

While in Limassol Port, maintenance work was carried out on the Enterprise, with the ship then sailing on her Mediterranean survey grounds, where she will continue operating until her next port visit in April.
The Cyprus Green Party has called on the government to report the presence of the Enterprise to the relevant international authorities.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.