When oil started to be pumped out of West Asia, Cyprus served as UK’s outpost securing the uninterrupted flow of the vital energy resource for the formidable industrial machine of the British Isles. Today, the industrial enterprises of Cyprus and that of Western Europe, depend on the same source. The situation is bound to be no different for many, many years to come.
At the end of 2011, it became clear that the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) the Republic of Cyprus has substantial natural gas. Noble Energy of Texas US, which has license to drill for gas in both Cyprus and Israel’s EEZ, announced that Cyprus’ Block 12 contains between three and nine trillion cubic feet of natural gas; it also said there is a 60% probability of geological success.
Three trillion cubic feet (tcf) is enough gas to meet the needs of the one million or so people on both sides of the Cyprus divide for over hundred years. About 50km from C Block 12, Noble Energy has discovered the Israeli Leviathan gas field carrying 16 tcf of gas.
There can be little doubt that the discovery of natural gas in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea is producing far reaching geo-political effects.
As soon as Noble Energy announced its discovery (Nov 2011), the US Department of State set up Bureau of Energy Resources (ENR) in a clear signal that Washington’s energy centric interests in general and in Cyprus in particular. Karen Enstrom, the ENR Regional Officer, is assigned to establish her headquarters in the US Embassy, Nicosia, for the diplomatic involvement of the US in energy developments in the Mediterranean, South Europe and North Africa.
Energy and strategic experts hope that the gas bonanza may potentially be a catalyst for the settlement of the dispute between Cyprus and Turkey which has been defying a solution since 1974, and has resulted Cyprus division into two halves. The donors’ conference held in 2004 failed to secure the necessary funds to finance the proposed settlement, which was rejected anyway by the overwhelming majority of Greek Cypriots. Seven years later, with the discovery and prospective exploitation of natural resources, there is this prospect of Cypriots themselves self- financing a just and thus viable settlement of the intractable Cyprus problem.
And on its part the Cyprus government has pledged that prospective proceeds out of the natural resources exploitation are guaranteed to be used for the interests of both Cypriot communities. This commitment comes on top of a raft of post-2004 measures in favour of the Turkish Cypriot community.
Taking part in the 14th Asia Security Forum meetings held in Delhi (Feb 2012) Dr Yiorghos Leventis, Director, International Security Forum, Cyprus, (www. inter-security-forum.org) opined that the settlement of the Cyprus imbroglio hinged upon a constructive stance by Ankara, as it is the rising regional power with high stakes in the island.
Turkey is already a major energy hub, member of the G-20, 17th biggest economy in the world, staunch NATO ally with the second biggest army in the Alliance boasting a military manpower equivalent more or less to the demographic size of the entire Greek Cypriot community. In Dr Leventis’s view Ankara should show a measure of compromise, if not straightforward magnanimity with a view to facilitating a long lasting Cypriot settlement.
However, one would ask: what are Ankara’s objectives with respect to Cyprus? Are these related to the promotion of a solution to the benefit of the people of Cyprus, Greek and Turkish Cypriots or is Turkey seeking the perpetuation of the system of a vassal half-baked state, half-a-country, as the Turkish leader called Cyprus recently?
Turkey is the only non-signatory to UNCLOS in the Region. Cyprus has ratified EEZ delimitation agreements with its eastern and southern neighbours, namely Israel and Egypt. Agreement with Lebanon has also been reached, and it awaits ratification by the Lebanese parliament. Under the Law of the Sea, an EEZ is a sea zone over which a state has special rights for exploration and use of marine sources, including production of energy from water and wind. (Law of the Sea, UN, Part V: Exclusive Economic Zone, Art 56).
What is Ankara’s position? It questions the right of the Republic of Cyprus to be entitled to its own EEZ. Turkey’s maritime policy is that islands are entitled neither to their own EEZ nor to continental shelf.
This argument, according to Yiorghos Leventis, has serious repercussions vis-a-vis the potential delimitation of both the EEZ and the continental shelf with Greece in the Aegean and the Mediterranean Sea, and, of course, in the case of Cyprus. It contravenes the provisions of the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), signed on Dec 10, 1982, at Montego Bay, Jamaica by 162 countries including the EU. The accord has become effective from Nov 16, 1994. Turkey is the only country in the region which has not signed UNCLOS.
Taken at its face value the Turkish argument implies that Cyprus is non-existent on the map of EEZ delimitations in the Eastern Mediterranean. In other words, according to Ankara’s logic, the sea zones in the region for the purposes of exploration and use of natural resources should be divided between Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Israel. Thus Ankara seeks to exclude Cyprus and Greece; the southeastern most Greek island, Kastellorizo, with 430 inhabitants lies 170 miles west of Cyprus but just one mile off the Turkish coast. A populated island with human economic activity gives it full rights to its own EEZ under UNCLOS.
Ankara apparently is giving precedence to its own needs as is clear from last December’s Famagusta drilling agreement. In the process, it can strengthen its position as an unrivalled energy hub. On the flipside, if Turkey has its way, devouring the Eastern Mediterranean basin energy resources circumventing international law, the scales will tilt in its favour, well giving it a disproportional leverage.
Turkey will come to acquire control over supply of a substantial part of the region’s energy resources. This has the inherent risk of Ankara holding both the EU and the wider Western Asia and North Africa hostage to its neo-Ottoman designs. In such a scenario it is next to impossible to identify room for Cyprus to play its key role in the EU’s and Western Asia’s energy security.
–POREG ANALYST TEAM
