This article was published by Al Jazeera International.
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| The resort town of Sybota and Paxoi islands in the distance could be impacted by hydrocarbon extraction, say environmental groups |
IGOUMENITSA, Greece – For the past
two years, the residents of Greece’s northwest province of Epirus have been
tripping up on short wooden stakes planted about a foot high in the ground. They
stand in rows that continue interminably through villages, over meadows and
mountains, blue ribbons fluttering from their tops.
Few Epirots are aware that these
stakes do not mark any future road, overhead cable or utility pipe. They are
grid markers that allow engineers to evenly space hundreds of controlled,
underground explosions that will send shock waves into Epirus’ subsurface, creating
three-dimensional maps of its rock formations. Engineers believe those
formations will suggest the presence of oil and natural gas.
Epirus is perhaps the last place on
Earth where one would expect to find hydrocarbon exploration. It is a pastoral
landscape of tilted meadows, gorges so deep and vast that birds born in them
never need to fly elsewhere, lakes that reflect the sky as clear as mercury,
and savage, snow-topped mountains that drop into an azure Ionian sea.
This is a still-pristine world many
Epirots do not want sullied. “Humanity will one day face shortages
of drinkable water, and we have some of Europe’s finest water here,» says
Vasilis Dimitriou, an activist with Greenpeace. He questions the wisdom of
driving concrete pipes through the water table to extract oil that may lie
beneath it. «If there is a fracture and oil seeps into the water table, the
area is ruined.»
Dimitriou says there was no consultation
with local residents when the government sold eleven exploration concessions
that stretch down the entire length of Greece’s west coast, on- and off-shore.
These were auctioned at the height of Greece’s economic crisis, in 2010-13, and
the last of them are now being ratified by parliament.
The results are now gradually coming
into evidence. Helicopters are airlifting drills to remote locations to bore to
a depth of about 30 metres for seismic charges to be laid. Protest gatherings
have become so ubiquitous that local government officials refuse to talk to
journalists about the exploration concession to Greece’s Energean and Spain’s Repsol, which were
also unavailable for comment.
But these inconveniences are nothing
compared to what may come. The port of Igoumenitsa fought a legal rearguard
action to stop dozens of crude oil storage tanks from being constructed at the
mouth of a forested fjord that leads to
the passenger port.
“It’s the first bit of land a tourist sees entering
Igoumenitsa,” says Dimitriou, who has a stake in the tourism industry – he’s
starting a kayaking company.
According
to a recent audit by Greece’s Association of Tourism Enterprises, the
hospitality industry may indirectly account for as much as 30 percent of the
Greek economy.
There are
also specific problems affecting biodiversity. The waters off Greece’s west
coast are the Mediterranean’s deepest – the so-called Hellenic Trench. Environmental
groups say this is a key feeding and spawning ground for vulnerable populations
of sperm whales, dolphins, monk seals and other marine mammals.
They say
controlled explosions used to conduct seismic imaging, and the drilling of
exploratory wells, could disorient and even kill these animals.
“WWF
Greece is here to make sure that oil drilling does not start,” says the
environmental organisation’s anti-hydrocarbon campaign co-ordinator, Dimitris
Ibrahim. “It’s not only an ill-conceived experiment for the marine environment
and nature in general. It’s very dangerous for our climate, for our local
communities and for our national economy.”
Hellenic
Petroleum, currently Greece’s biggest hydrocarbons company, says it has spent
millions mapping cetaceans’ migratory patterns and its vessels will stop
operating within proximity of one.
Visions
of the economy
With per capita GDP of 11,870 euros
($13,006), Epirus is one of Europe’s 20 poorest regions[1].
Its main industry is state services and administration. But it is not entirely
a newcomer to the high-pressure private economy.
Ten years ago, Epirus was connected
to the outside world through the Egnatia motorway, a six-billion euro, 670-kilometre
engineering spectacle of bridges and tunnels that runs across northern Greece.
The recreation of an ancient road that
yoked Asia Minor to imperial Rome, Egnatia has been wildly successful in modern
times. An estmated 150,000 trucks a year ply the motorway from Turkey to Italy and
beyond via three Adriatic ferry routes. This has given renewed importance to Igoumenitsa,
which is the road’s terminal port, and the local chamber of commerce sees the
region’s future prosperity in terms that have little to do with hydrocarbons.
“There
are two large infrastructure works that interest us - the marina and the
logistics centre in Kapsaka,” says Alekos Paschos, president of the Igoumenitsa
Chamber of Commerce.
The
chamber is looking for investors to build a 340-yacht marina inside
Igoumenitsa’s fjord to cater to Italian and other European pleasure boats.
Docking fees would provide the city with a steady revenue stream, and the
chamber believes it would create hundreds of secondary jobs in hotels and
restaurants.
The
chamber conceived the logistics centre to work hand-in-hand with the Egnatia
motorway, and it would include a vast assembly and trans-shipment area.
“If these
are done, the unemployment problem in the area is solved for many years,” says
Paschos. “The logistics centre could employ 4,000 people. Igoumenitsa has a
population of 30,000 so you can imagine that we’d be looking for more workers
to come here.”
In contrast,
Paschos says, oil extraction would only employ about 120 people in the
Igoumenitsa area.
The
hydrocarbon vision
Greece currently imports three
quarters of its total energy needs, including 99 percent of the oil and gas it
consumes. These hydrocarbon imports alone cost it 12-15 billion euros a year[2],
and make it one of Europe’s most energy-insecure countries.
“The
income we make on Monday from tourism we spend on Tuesday to buy crude oil and
natural gas,” says Yiannis Bassias, head of Hellenic Hydrocarbon Resources
Management, the state authority responsible for farming out concessions.
Those oil
and gas imports are increasing for environmental reasons. Greece’s three
month-old conservative government vows to end the use of lignite coal for power
generation altogether by 2028 – ten years earlier than Germany - and plans to
start shutting down some of the older lignite-fired power stations immediately.
That
pledge requires increased use of imported gas as well as renewables, and Prime
Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has invited the private sector to contribute. On
October 2, he inaugurated the construction of what will be Europe’s largest combined
cycle gas turbine power station in central Greece. “This investment… means we
can produce new wealth, cheap energy and still live in a beautiful natural
environment that is hospitable to all,” Mitsotakis said of the 826MW plant.
Bassias
sees gas as being the fuel of the foreseeable future. “Gas will be king for the
next 40 years globally. That is what industry will use, that’s how we will
generate electricity. It’s gas that’s important,” he says.
But the prospectors
in western Greece are also keen to exploit oil.
«We believe there is oil at the quantities that at some
point might influence the whole Greek economy,» says Yiannis Grigoriou, CEO of
Hellenic Petroleum, which plans to begin extracting 140mn barrels of oil oil in
the Gulf of Patra early next year.
“In the future the royalties that the
Greek state will have from that oilfield will be 200-250 million euros per
year,” says Grigoriou.
These royalties could be repeated ten
to fifteen times over if other areas of exploration bear fruit, and Grigoriou
says the government plans to create a national pension fund, inspired by the
example of Norway’s Statoil.
Greece’s pension system is technically bankrupt, and the
government is paying for about two thirds of pensions. At roughly 18 billion
euros a year, it is Greece’s single biggest budget expenditure, larger than
defence, health and education combined.
And then there is the prospect of jobs.
After an eight-year recession, Greece’s unemployment rate still stands at 17
percent – by far the highest in the European Union.
“Every
position in exploration… is supported by another four positions in the entire
industry,” says energy analyst Mihalis Myrianthis. “You have refining, you have
trading, you have storing, you have transporting. It’s an entire industry that
will put in motion if we start producing oil or gas.”
Former
energy and environment minister Yiannis Maniatis went even further at a recent
hydrocarbons conference in Athens. “In the entire Mediterranean region there
are oilrigs and pipelines in need of maintenance and repair. Greece has
shipyards and engineers. Why shouldn’t Greece develop an industry in doing this
maintenance?” he said.
Igoumenitsa’s Dimitriou wonders why,
in an age of climate change, all this money and ingenuity isn’t being invested
in renewable energy instead.
“It
would be much better for energy production to take place in cities, where the
energy is consumed. Walls, roofs, even window panes could become energy
generators,» Dimitriou says.
The ruling New Democracy party says Greece is not opting
for hydrocarbons at the expense of the environment. It has an ambitious plan to
create 14,000 MW of renewable electricity generating capacity from renewables
by 2030[3].
That is more than double Greece’s entire current electricity consumption.
But the consensus in the hydrocarbon community is that
renewables cannot yet drive heavy industry or cover electricity baseloads
because of limited storage capacity.
“Our civilisation is currently based on
oil and natural gas,” says Grigoriou. “All the scenarios the European Union has
are that until 2030 or 2050 it will remain the same. We will change the energy
mix going to natural gas and renewables, but this will be done naturally.”
Whether the capitalist economy can
sustain business opportunities and jobs while lowering carbon emissions remains
to be proven. The most demonstrably effective weapon against climate change in
Greece so far has been recession. Greek emissions fell by a third to 91 million
tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year in 2010-2016, as Greece’s economy contracted
by a quarter. But it is now growing again by about two percent a year.
New Democracy maintains that its new
policy emphasis on renewables and gas at the expense of lignite will bring
Greece in line with its commitments to the Paris Climate Accord of 2015, and go
beyond that.
“If mother nature has gifted Greece
with resources which we can extract from the subsurface without damaging the
environment, why not do so?” asks Grigoriou.
[2]
From interview with HELPE CEO Grigoriou
[3]
Speech by deputy energy minister Alexandra Sdoukou at Rhodes European Forum on
3 Oct.
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