Greek exploration in the Ionian Sea for underwater oil and gas reserves has caused concerns in Albania due to dispute over maritime border.
PATRA, Greece and TIRANA,
Nov. 14, 2012
As the Nordic Explorer, a Norwegian gas and oil exploration ship, left the northwestern Greek port of Patra this week, there was a certain sense of hope among Greek officials who had hired the ship’s owners to look for what could prove a solution to Greece’s deep economic crisis.
“This is important day for Greece,” Energy Minister Evangelos Livieratos told the assembled journalists. “It is an optimistic sign that this country can plan things properly.
But hope and optimism quickly turned to concern north of the border, in Albania, were plans by Greece to explore parts of the Ionian Sea for underwater oil and gas reserves have caused concerns due to the possibility of Greek research inside Albanian waters.
The two countries lack an official agreement over the maritime border demarcation, after Albania’s Constitutional Court voided an agreement reached in 2009, which was widely seen in Albania as unfavorable to the country.
Greek hopes
Facing economic depression, predicted oil and gas reserves are a light at the end of the tunnel for the Greek economy. So the Greeks are hoping to license chunks of the Mediterranean by the first half of 2014 for energy production. The most promising areas, experts say, are parts of the Mediterranean south of the island of Crete and the Ionian Sea, which Greece shares with Albania.
As such, the Nordic Explorer’s three-month voyage in the Ionian Sea and the coast of Crete is seen as “a great message of national uplift and optimism,” according to Greek media.
If oil and gas is indeed found, over the next decade it could turn Greece into the next Norway, whose vast oil and gas sea reserves have made it the richest country in Europe.
There is one problem: The unresolved maritime border with Albania.
Greece’s foreign ministry said this week it wants to reach an accommodation with the Albanian government as soon as possible, making it clear that solving the dispute would be economically beneficial to both countries since there would be more certainty for development.
Albanian concerns
Tirana wants certainty too. It just doesn’t want Greece to act unilaterally until the two countries have reached an agreement since there isn’t one in place right now, says Albanian Foreign Minister Edmond Panariti.
In a press conference this week, he warned Greece to stay clear of the disputed area.
“There can be absolutely no economic activity in an area in which no economic exclusivity agreement has been reached. You know that the decision of the Albanian Constitutional Court voided the previous agreement, and at this time Albania and Greece have no agreement on the maritime boundary. We certainly are interested in such an agreement, but it requires time, it requires that everything be conducted in accordance with international and national law and what is more important is that the new agreement should be acceptable by both parties in order to be acceptable long-term,” Panariti said.
The Albanian government faces a lot of pressure domestically on the maritime border, a cause cꭨbre of the growing nationalist movement, the Red and Black Alliance.
A spokesman for the alliance said the government should move to protect Albania’s territorial waters or its own volunteers would take to the seas and do it themselves.
“The alliance will register hundreds of volunteers ready to protect the Albanian border if the Albanian state authorities won’t do so,” said Kreshnik Spahiu, leader of the Red and Black Alliance
Red and Black Alliance activists have taken similar actions before, using small boats and jet skis waving Albanian flags to lay symbolic markings somewhere in the middle of the waters of the Corfu Canal to signify the border line, following reports the Greek Coast Guard has been harassing Albanian fishermen to respect the borders set by the nullified 2009 agreement.
In addition, the alliance said it had contacted the company contracted to do the exploration, Norway’s Petroleum Geo Services, to let it know about the dispute and the lack of an official agreement over the border demarcation.
Cautious moves
Despite the political rhetoric, the Northern Explorer has stayed clear of the disputed border area so far. By the time this newspaper went to press, the ship was working about 100 nautical miles south of Corfu, off the western coast of Greece, according to its global positioning signal on the Marine Traffic website.
Albanian media have been monitoring the ship’s location daily through similar GPS services widely available to the public through the web. Such information has served to diffuse some worry that Albania’s territorial waters were being violated.
Greek officials were quoted by the private Top Channel station saying the plans for the ships itinerary had been in changed at the last minute. But the officials did not say whether such changes came as a response to Albanian concerns.
Albania’s own reserves
To a certain extent, Greece is behind Albania in such exploration, say Albanian experts in Tirana.
Media reports indicate consecutive governments in Albania, starting in the late years of the Communist regime, had commissioned foreign companies to search for underwater oil reserves in Albanian waters. There had been expeditions in 1988, 1999 and 2007.
Currently the Albanian government through its National Agency of Natural Resources has hired a British company, Capricorn, a subsidiary of the Scottish oil company Cairn Energy Plc., to do the research.
The Albanian agency says it won’t run into problems with the border demarcation, with its own exploration, because the area believed to hold good reserves is located deep inside Albanian waters. It also noted that its own contract with the company specifies that the agreement with Greece over border demarcation is still pending.
“We are way ahead of the Greeks in our work. We’ve already done what they are doing today. We are at the stage in which we are look for prospectors and looking into possible structures to extract the oil and gas under the seas, the agency’s head,” Perparim Hajno, told Albanian private television Top Channel.
Albania and Greece have an important yet often uneasy relationship that has seen many ups and downs in the past two decades.
