Good news for gas operators, less so for environmentalists. On Wednesday, the French major TotalEnergies et Italian Eni announced that they had discovered new offshore gas deposits off the coast of Cyprus reinforcing “the promising nature of this area and its development”.
According to a press release, this deposit is located at 162 km southwest of the Cypriot coast, in “Block 6”, where previous discoveries had already taken place in 2018 and last August. According to TotalEnergies, “the Zeus-1 well encountered a column of gas of 105 net meters in carbonate reservoirs”.
Cyprus, the main gas player in the Eastern Mediterranean
TotalEnergies holds a 50% stake in block 6, of which Eni is the operator. “The new data collected on this well will allow us to evaluate the options for the rapid development of the resources discovered”, commented Kevin McLachlan, director of exploration for TotalEnergies, in a press release.
Cyprus dreams of becoming a major energy player following the discovery in recent years of these deposits in the eastern Mediterranean, a subject of additional tension with Turkey. The island has an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) divided into 12 potentially very gas-rich blocks. TotalEnergies is present in seven of these blocks.