The United Nations, which supervises a buffer zone between the north and south, has hailed the gas discoveries as a way of generating wealth that could finance a reunification of Cyprus. But Mr. Akan’s fears about a greater conflict may not be entirely unfounded.

Even before any gas has been produced, the discoveries have created “risks, big risks, as well as a myriad of legal issues,” Richard L. Morningstar said in March when he was the United States special envoy for Eurasian energy, adding that the issues “go beyond Cyprus, they go beyond Israel, they go beyond Greece — they affect the whole region.”

This year, the United States established its first regional headquarters for a new Bureau of Energy Resources in Cyprus. Although it, too, has urged a fair distribution of resources between the halves, Washington has strongly supported the right of the recognized government of Cyprus, a member of the European Union, to drill in its waters.

That forceful backing may have reinforced the Greek Cypriot leaders’ unwillingness to divide oil and gas wealth with the Turkish Cypriots, at least for now. “Don’t speak about sharing,” Neoklis Sylikiotis, the Cypriot commerce minister, said during a recent interview. Only after the division of the island is resolved can the revenue be shared, he said.

As attitudes harden, the northerners have mapped out blocks of the eastern Mediterranean for licensing that roughly overlap waters claimed by the Cyprus government. The Turkish government has acknowledged that one vessel chartered by the Turkish Petroleum Corporation had made seismic surveys on behalf of northern Cyprus in waters that overlap Cypriot claims. And the northerners have begun their own onshore explorations, starting in Sinirustu.

Greek Cypriot officials like Mr. Sylikiotis dismiss the exploratory drilling in Sinirustu — which they call by its Greek name, Syngrasis — as nothing more than a theatrical stunt. But the drilling work has gone ahead at full speed this summer. A heady, sulfurous odor created by the mixture of drilling fluids and mud hung in the air over the village despite a warm breeze.

Image One of Europe's most intractable ethnic rifts is in Cyprus. Credit... The New York Times

Clad in red overalls bearing the logo of Turkish Petroleum, Ekrem Akyuz, 29, one of the Turkish engineers overseeing the site, shared a watermelon with colleagues in one of the dozens of air-conditioned trailers that surround the drilling rig. Mr. Akyuz said the geological data from the site were being kept unusually secure, making it hard to judge whether the area was promising. But he said the project was technically similar to wells he had drilled in other parts of the world.