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● 1971-2005, Prinos consortium: 72, of an aver-
age depth of 2,320 m.
As far as offshore exploration is concerned,
drilling in the Aegean Sea was performed in the
Gulf of Thermaikos, a part of the Thracian Sea
and the island of Lemnos (1 drilling). Very few
drillings were made in the Ionian Sea, all at very
shallow sea-depths.
72 drillings were performed in the Prinos/South
Kavala area by the OCEANIC consortium and its
successors. From the remainder, 76 drillings were
carried out by DEP and DEP-EKY, 62 of which
were onshore and 14 offshore. 74 drillings were
carried out by foreign companies; however, many
of these drillings can be traced back to the explo-
ration carried out in 1939-1967.
Out of 150 drillings, only 25-30 (16%-20% of the
total) corresponded to current oil-geological tar-
gets, and therefore fulfilled the conditions for
hydrocarbon discovery.
The only exploitable reserves were discovered by
Canadian and US companies, albeit in a com-
pletely different area. These were the South
Kavala natural gas field and the Prinos oil field,
which were discovered in 1972 in the Prinos-
Kavala basin. Oil and natural gas production
began in 1981 by a consortium known as “North
Aegean Petroleum Company”. Greece reached
maximum oil output in 1984, at 26,600 barrels per
day, while maximum natural gas output was
achieved in 1987.
The pipelines
The developments in the oil and gas exploration
front in the South-Eastern Mediterranean region
are apparently changing the setting of the
geostrategic energy game in the wider region of
SE Europe. The discovery of deposits in Israel
and Cyprus and the possible discovery of
deposits in Greece, provide the EU with a new
potential source of natural gas supplies, apart
from Russia and Azerbaijan. Under this lens,
Greece is considering its own options in regard to
Europe's potential third source of natural gas sup-
ply. After all, the Greek government has been
making overtures to both Cyprus and Israel since
last year, and has already started discussing its
possible role as an entry point for the transship-
ment of Mediterranean gas to Europe. In this
vein, the Greek side estimates that the ITGI
pipeline network could be the principal means for
shipping gas from the Mediterranean, either to
Italy through the Greco-Italian IGI pipeline, or to
the Balkans through the Greco-Bulgarian IGB
pipeline. It should be reminded that both the
Greek Ministry for the Environment and Energy,
and its Italian counterpart have made clear that
the construction of the project is not exclusively
Trade with Greece
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● 10%: the probability of detecting an exploitable
reserve in the Gulf of Patras, based on existing survey
data.
● US$30 million: the estimated drilling cost
● 3%: the probability of detecting an exploitable
reserve south of Crete (w/o seismic data)
● US$100 million: the estimated drilling cost
Table: The probability of establishing an oil system
in Greece