By Patroclos
ONE OF the few things this government does extremely well is the non-commercial exploitation of hydrocarbons. This non-commercial exploitation might earn the government popularity points and its energy minister Sheikh Lakkotrypis’ high approval ratings for his powers of gas exaggeration, but for the rest of us it is just third-rate theatre.
Special guests flew in all the way from Texas to take part in this theatre last week. Two Noble Energy vice presidents were in town to meet Prez Nik and declare the Aphrodite well commercially viable. Keith Elliot, the vice president for the Eastern Mediterranean said Noble was “bringing the Aphrodite discovery to the next phase of exploitation”, something that “we hope will bring prosperity to the people of Cyprus.”
Sheikh Lakkotrypis was ecstatic. For once he did not have to talk about grand plans that would never materialise but had something tangible to say. “We are progressing from exploration to exploitation,” he boasted while adding: “I cannot emphasise strongly enough the significance of this development.”
For the government’s non-commercial exploitation purposes the significance of the development was indisputable, but for the casual observer, it was just a case of a bit of theatre assisted by Noble’s head honchos who really did not have to come here all the way from Texas to state the obvious – that they will sell the gas.
A DAY later, the Sheikh had another reason to be ecstatic. French oil giant Total, which in January had announced it would quit Kyproulla because it had not been able to locate drilling targets in blocks 10 and 11, on Wednesday signed an agreement to carry on conducting geological and geo-chemical surveys.
Information about the new contract was not released, but I bet the government gave the French company everything it had asked for to stay here and continue with low-cost exploratory surveys, just so Lakkotrypis could say Total was still interested in Cyprus gas. Total did get out of its contractual obligation to carry out costly exploratory drilling as part of the new agreement.
Speaking of drilling, Noble’s head honchos mentioned nothing about it during their visit, even though under the company’s contract with the Republic, it is obliged to drill a second well before October 23 of this year. Could the announcement of the commercial exploitation of Aphrodite have been the concession Noble made to the government to get out of this costly procedure?
ENI-KOGAS has also stopped its drilling, which was supposed to have moved to another plot after lack of results at the Onasagoras plot, on the pretext that it had to send its drilling platform for maintenance and repairs. In short, all exploratory drilling in our EEZ has stopped and plans for future drilling have been suspended.
Nobody picked this up because we were all too busy celebrating our progress from exploration to exploitation, both commercial and non-commercial.
WAS IT a coincidence that last Sunday the pseudo foreign minister of the north Ozdil Nami announced that the navtex for Turkey’s seismic research vessel Barbaros, which expires on April 6, would not be renewed? Was Turkey so keen on the resumption of the talks that it gave in to Nik’s courageous ultimatum?
As we know only too well, the Turks do not make unilateral concessions. In order not to renew the navtex, they were given assurances from someone that we would stop all exploratory drilling, which was reason the Turks were violating our EEZ. We do not know whether the Yanks arranged for the drilling to stop in consultation with Nik or if it was our prez’s initiative.
Was it another coincidence that the nerdy UN envoy Espen Barth Eide arrived this week to prepare the ground for the resumption of the talks? But it was no coincidence that in the same week we also had the theatre involving Noble.
The prez pulled off quite a clever stunt to deflect attention away from the fact that we had temporarily given up our sovereign right to carry out drilling in our EEZ so he could triumphantly return to the talks claiming that the Turks had given in to his diktat.
IN BRUSSELS for the EU summit, Nik made sure the cameras got shots of him talking to Greece’s PM Alexis Tsipras. He wanted to silence his critics who had been claiming that his government, especially Finance Minister Harris Georgiades, had not offered its unwavering support to Greece during its bailout negotiations.
He felt the photo ops were more than necessary after the visit to Athens by AKEL chief, Andros, who returned claiming the Greek government felt let down by Nicosia during the Eurogroup meetings.
The narcissistic finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, had complained about Harris’ stance, said Andros after their meeting, but refused to elaborate, urging hacks to direct their questions at the Marxist poser (these are mine, not his words).
DISY members were so jealous of AKEL’s budding love affair with the Greek government that they discussed the matter at the party’s political office. Apart from censuring horrible Harris, who had also been invited to attend, members argued that the party should faithfully support the Syriza government regardless of its loony Marxism.
AS WE HAD predicted last week, Prez Nik asked Crystal to resign when he met her last Sunday, but the lady told him she was going nowhere. To save face he asked the attorney-general to look into the legal procedure to sack an independent state official.
Nik suffered another embarrassment the next day when Crystal’s ex appeared on radio and mentioned that the prez was aware that his office represented Andreas Vgenopoulos before appointing her governor. This had been reported by Haravghi, several months before the appointment, said Andreas Georghadjis.
“We don’t have to read all the newspapers,” was the brash response of the deputy government spokesman Victoras Papadopoulos and the matter was closed. Should we also mention that this is Kyproulla and all lawyers know each other’s business, especially which office represented a high profile client like Vgen.
CENTRAL Bank director Stavros Zenios tendered his resignation on Friday, as he could not “speak publicly about the need for renewal, modernisation and transparency, while serving an untrustworthy institution”. Zenios, who has his sights set on much bigger things, could not allow his painstakingly created public image to be tarnished by remaining on the bank’s board.
The former university rector pompously said: “We have reached a deadlock, and at this moment I do not see a solution. What is needed is courage from the protagonists, the courage of self-sacrifice.” Unfortunately not everyone has Zenios’ courage for self-sacrifice.
STELIOS Kiliaris has shown that he has the courage. He sacrificed a lot more than Zenios. As executive director he was on 120 grand a year, whereas Zenios was only on 30 grand and also has another source of income – a hefty monthly salary from the Cyprus University.
In this respect, Kiliaris, whose age makes him unemployable, made a much bigger sacrifice. Technically speaking, Kiliaris has not yet resigned although he has stopped going to his office at the Central Bank. He has taken leave for a few weeks before officially leaving the job, so that he completes the months of service that make him eligible for a pension.
It would have been too big a sacrifice, even for the courageous Kiliaris, to have walked out immediately after announcing his resignation and losing his pension. But I would not be surprised if Nik offers him another state sinecure in the not too distant future.
GEORGE Syrichas, the other executive director, has no plans to heed the calls of the political parties and resign, especially after giving up his job as senior manager at the Central Bank to take up the post. Syrichas was a candidate for governor after Professor Panicos’ departure, but Nik chose Crystal because he did not want a man known to be very close to DISY chief Averof in charge of the Central Bank.
He had also been the right-hand man of Athanasios Orphanides who many consider had some responsibility for the problems of the banking sector. But nobody has ever said that the top managers of the Central Bank were in any way to blame for the collapse of the banking sector. After all they were only supervising them.
SPEAKING of the banks, Bank of Cyprus CEO John Hourican was recently given a display of the union mentality that afflicts even the most senior of his managers. At a meeting of the bank’s top brass, one senior manager proposed that all BoC employees, who had bought the high-interest, convertible bonds, that turned to shares and then to peanuts, should be compensated by the bank.
Our mole did not inform us whether the senior manager was suggesting a full or partial reimbursement of the amounts staff had invested. Apparently all managers at the meeting had invested in the convertible bonds. Hourican vetoed the idea without discussion, aware that such a move would be catastrophic for the bank, as soon as word got out.
All the thousands of bondholders that have been holding demonstrations demanding their money back would have turned homicidal if such a decision was taken and they would have been perfectly justified.
THE LIST of deputies with NPLs caused uproar, but the real concern of our public spirited deputies is another issue related to the insolvency bill – the obligations of loan guarantors. This was the reason that the five bills that make up the insolvency framework were not taken to the plenum for voting last Thursday.
The reason for the decision, according to Junior, was that the “bills are complicated and there are issues that may need to be clarified through discussion in parliament.” As was widely reported, the main sticking point was the provisions regarding the liability of people who had guaranteed the loans of others.
And this is because the overwhelming majority of deputies are guarantors of loans and could end up having to pay them off if the borrower does not. Guarantors at risk of paying other people’s loans should rest assured that our deputies will do everything they possibly can to protect them, not because it is in their personal interest to do so but because they care about the vulnerable members of our society.
THREE cheers for visually impaired DISY deputy and lawyer Rikkos Mappourides, who revealed that he had used the services of prostitutes. He is the first elected representative of the people to make such a public admission. Mappourides supports the legalisation of prostitution and thinks there is nothing wrong with it as long as it is the woman’s choice. I am certain that when Mappourides visited a hooker, before paying her, he asked her if she chose the profession voluntarily or was forced into it by traffickers and pimps. If the latter he would leave, because he is that sort of morally upright guy.
I HAD never realised the unifying potential of halloumi until I received a tweet from a skettos drinker, who had been inspired by the agriculture minister’s comment that securing a protected designation of origin for our national cheese would benefit everyone on the island.
The tweet said: “Halloumi/Hellim: a truly federal cheese. Unites sheep’s, goat’s and cow’s milk under two names but with a single international personality.” He forgot to mention the necessary political equality among the different types of milk.
