By Patroclos

COMMERCE minister Giorgos Lakkotrypis lost his swagger on Friday when it was officially announced that the drilling by ENI-KOGAS in bloc 9 found no hydrocarbons and all his plans for the future had to be changed.

But to his credit he kept a brave face, speaking to the cameras on Friday afternoon and later sitting at the glass coffee table in the CyBC’s cocktail-bar-style news studio sharing his thoughts with the delectable news presenter Vivienne Kanari. You half expected a cocktail waitress to come and take their order.

I was very disappointed to notice Ms Kanari stopped using the bright red lip-stick she was sporting when she first started reading the news at the start of the month. I suspect the boring old fuddy-duddies that run the corporation may have been behind this unnecessary de-glamorising.

Lakkotrypis, who until a few weeks ago was strutting around like an energy Sheikh talking about selling gas to Jordan and Egypt (he was to sign a sale agreement), putting down a gas pipeline all the way to Greece and establishing a gas liquefaction terminal in Kyproulla, has been brought back down to earth, his glowing public image receiving a bit of a blow.

His grand plans for regional energy domination may have collapsed but this was just a temporary setback. The would-be Sheikh told Ms Kanari that the focus would now be on the Aphrodite plot, which had significant quantities of gas, but all options were open.

So open, the plan to sell gas to Egypt, that was a dead certainty a few weeks ago and all that remained was the signing ceremony, would now have to be put on hold, as he conceded when asked if the government was going ahead with the Egypt deal.

WHO HAD created all these expectations about the drilling in bloc 9? We were being told that bloc 9 had much more gas than bloc 12 in which Noble Energy had found substantial quantities but not enough to make us a major energy player.

So optimistic was Sheikh Lakkotrypris that he was having discussions about the sale of gas to Egypt and the possibility of using the country’s idle liquefaction plants to export our gas to other countries. But on Friday he said that the government’s strategic planning “prepared us for all possibilities of exploitation”.

It did not want the “the one-dimensional choice of the land terminal.” Really? How many times over the last 18 months had the Sheikh and his boss prez Nik assured us that the government would be going ahead with building of an LNG land terminal regardless? And they kept repeating this one-dimensional choice even after it was quite clear that the gas quantities found by Noble made the terminal unviable.

We should have guessed that once Nik pledged that the land terminal would go ahead, it was never going to happen.

ON FRIDAY the sheepish Sheikh even talked about selling CNG (compressed natural gas), which was a big no-no until recently as it indicated limited ambitions – you can only sell it to nearby markets because the cost of shipping it is much greater than with LNG.

He did however learn one crucial lesson from this colossal disappointment. That this business was characterised by uncertainty and “nobody could know (if there are hydrocarbons) from looking at seismic data.” One thing was proved beyond doubt. “If there is no drilling, especially at such depths, nobody could know what there is down there,” he said.

Lakkotrypis is wrong about this. There is one man that knows what quantities of hydrocarbons lay hidden under the sea without drilling – gas guru, former head of our energy service and current advisor of the Greek Prime Minister on energy issues, Solon Gasinis, who can smell gas from thousands of miles away. In Nicosia he could smell if someone has left his gas cooker on in Paphos.

Speaking on radio yesterday Gasinis said he knew from the seismic data that gas quantities in the Onasagoras plot were “not very big”. A pity he did not tell ENI-KOGAS and left the consortium to waste some 80 million bucks drilling where there was no gas.

But he was very optimistic about the Amathusa plot, at which the new drilling would take place. This would have “substantial and big quantities of gas,” Gasinis said yesterday, making a mockery of Lakkotrypis’ claim that “if there is no drilling, nobody could know.”

Gasinis knows because he has the nose and we hope he is right, for the sake of the drilling joint venture as nobody wants it to be become known as ENI-NOGAS.

THIS WAS not the only disappointment we suffered last week. A day before the gas news, we were all devastated to hear the president of Mother Russia Vladimir Putin compound his recent betrayal of Kyproulla by referring to “Northern Cyprus and the Republic of Cyprus in the south,” during a news conference.

And it got worse. He also spoke about a “solution that would suit both the northern, Turkish, and southern, Greek, parts of the island.” He then said “we have very good relations with Turkey” and spoke about his recent visit and how bilateral relations were becoming stronger. “Russia and Turkey have very many – I’d like to stress this – coinciding regional interests,” he concluded, callously hurting the feelings of our politicians and hacks.

Russia’s most loyal and faithful supporter, Phil, said Putin “surprised negatively” by resorting to “ambiguous diplomatic terminology”, his “references to north and south raising questions”. The paper tried to reassure its concerned readers by saying that “Russian sources in Moscow told Phil ‘there is no change on Russia’s policy on the Cyprus problem’.”

Did the Moscow source mean it would remain as duplicitous and two-faced as it had always been?

OUR WISE politicians also had an explanation for Putin’s “verbal slip”. All parties, with the exception of DISY, blamed our government’s “one-dimensional foreign policy” for Moscow’s change of stance. Nik’s government had driven Putin into Turkey’s arms by siding with Yanks, the simpletons concluded.

“With the Americano-centric tactic of Anastasiades we are gradually losing the support of our traditional allies,” lamented DIKO while EDEK “could not forget that the Russian Federation, as the Soviet Union before it, was a steady friend and supporter of the Republic.”

The Perdikis party believed “Russia turned to Turkey because the Cyprus Republic did not ensure – taking it for granted as an ally – strengthening relations with Russia by developing common interests.” What common interests could we have developed? Should we also have annexed a part of the Ukraine or sent weapons to Bashar al Assad?

YIORKOS Lillikas, who, like all Paphite villagers, thinks he is a great brain, expanded on the Perdikis theory. Prez Nik had to pursue “the re-kindling and deepening of relations with Russia,” he said adding that “we must broaden our common interests with Russia, signing a series of substantial agreements that have been pending for long time.”

Perhaps we should sign an agreement with Russia, like Turkey has done, for the construction of a €20 billion nuclear power station (its site should be in Paphos because there will be millions in backhanders). Even then we would be at a disadvantage because we cannot order as much natural gas from Russia as Turkey does every year.

Our politicians are smart enough to know that relations between countries are based on common interests, but not smart enough to realise that Russia stands to gain infinitely more from developing its common interests with Turkey than with an inconsequential midget country that has nothing to offer it.

Lillikas’ comments should be taken with a bag of salt. He was the guy stridently claiming that we could avoid the bailout in 2013 by pre-selling our natural gas deposits that only Gasinis knew existed for billions of bucks.

THE CON-MAN smartness of our politicians (in Greek the word is bagabontia) was evident at the House on Thursday, when the parties, apart from DISY, approved the EDEK bill suspending the foreclosures law until the end of January.

As the implementation of the law was a condition for the release of €350 million sixth tranche of aid from the ESM, the parties waited until the money was received by the government before suspending it. Not only did the parties pull a fast one on the dumb Franks and Krauts, they could also pose as the guardians of impoverished home-owners who could not repay their bank loans.

The absurdity was that they had advertised their dishonesty to our lenders for no reason – the foreclosures law cannot be implemented because the accompanying regulations have not been prepared yet.

NOT ONLY did we fool the Troika last week, we also prevented attempts to unblock two chapters in Turkey’s accession

negotiations with the EU. Foreign minister Ioannis Kasoulides put up a fight at the EU General Affairs Council that was discussing the conclusions of the enlargement report and succeeded in keeping all chapters blocked.

Reading a report from Brussels in Alithia, we were informed that the three countries supporting the unblocking of the two chapters at the Council were France, Germany and Luxembourg, while the UK which always backed the Turks, adopted a “mild stance”.

Was it possible for the unfailingly pro-Turkish UK not to have stabbed us in the back? I picked up Phil whose Brussels correspondent Pavlos Xanthoulis uncovers a British conspiracy against Kyproulla at least once a week to get a more balanced view and I was not disappointed.

France, Germany and Luxembourg “insisted on the unblocking of the chapters right to the end,” reported Xanthoulis and added: “As Phil has been informed the role of maestro of the ‘chorus’ that had been set up, for one more time, belonged to Britain.” I am sure Xanthoulis’ information is absolutely right, even though it is a bit surprising to hear that the Germans and French are now following instructions from the Brits.

THE SCHEMING deputy Attorney General Rikkos Erotokritou has been doing a fine job undermining his boss Costas Clerides.

The latest manifestation of this undermining sparked a reaction from Clerides who issued a statement condemning “leaks to the press that serve expediency, providing selective information about what had been discussed at meetings regarding a big criminal case.”

The case he was referring to was the prosecution of the five Bank of Cyprus officials. When the names of the three directors and two executives were released Rikkos had been telling friendly hacks that he had wanted to prosecute 11 BoC officials but in the end the view of the AG prevailed.

In this way Rikkos could be seen as being tougher than his boss and wanting to punish more people for the collapse of the banking sector than the AG.

In his statement, the AG said: “The only criterion for every decision taken is that it is based on sound legal data that can be documented and not on impressing the public or gaining praise for seemingly brave decisions.” He could only have been referring to tricky Rikki.

PREZ NIK should be back in Kyproulla today, but we do not know if he will wait until after Xmas to return to work.

Hopefully he will choose to stay at home and we can enjoy a peaceful and quite Christmas. I will leave you with the religious imagery in an eloquent report about Nik leaving hospital last Sunday, that appeared in Phil.

“From the Mount Sinai where he underwent surgery to repair two valves, President Anastasiades started his march for his return to the Golgotha of office.” If I were religious I would take great offence at this irreverence, but unfortunately I am not, but I will still wish you Merry Christmas.





