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In the eastern Mediterranean, Greece, Cyprus and Turkey are in the midst of a bitter fairness, on the brink of violence, for herbal fuel extraction rights, even though fuel is a fossil fuel that is not ecologically sustainable or a lucrative advertising proposal for the region, the parties involved can take two strokes of a stone calling for a moratorium on the exploitation of new hydrocarbon reserves in the region Helenic well, where the fuel tanks are located. shock and serve Europe’s long-term purpose of restricting greenhouse fuel emissions.
The perception of a drilling ban, which can begin with a two-year moratorium on any underwater energy exploration, is not a natural fantasy, as much of the western and central Mediterranean is already prohibited for oil and fuel exploration, for environmental reasons. In the Aegean Sea, maximum hydrocarbon explorations have been banned in the sea shared by Greece and Turkey since 1976.
Above all, new oil and fuel production undermines the objectives of the United Nations Paris Climate Treaty to curb global warming until 2050; In addition, the economic outlook for deep-sea herbal fuel is incredibly bad, even if the fuel recovers after the dizzying drop in costs caused by the coronavirus pandemic. If drilling were ever carried out in the Greek Pit, a 400-mile-long, 17,000-foot-deep marine canyon stretching from northwestern Greece to the southern tip of Turkey, the region would actually be the burial position of billions of stranded assets, experts say.
By pointing to the trench in an area, its neighbouring countries (the nations of the European Union, Greece and Cyprus, as well as Turkey) would follow in the footsteps of France, Italy and Croatia. In 2016, France paved the way by pronouncing a moratorium on drilling in all French seas – in the Mediterranean, in the Atlantic and in the waters of French territories abroad. All legal extraction activities lately will stop until 2040. France argued that hydrocarbon extraction was at odds with the global effort to particularly reduce the use of fossil fuels, enshrined in the law of the Paris weather agreement a year earlier.
At the time, Environment Minister Nicolas Hulot lobbied the reasoning of weather scientists around the world: “80% of the world’s fossil fuels will have to remain be under the surface of the earth if we are to respect the Paris Climate Treaty. “
New Zealand, Ireland, Spain and 11 U. S. statesThey also did the same: Spain’s measure, once adopted in Parliament this year as planned, will without delay ban the new extraction of coal, oil and fuel and end direct subsidies for fossil fuels. avoid making an investment in fossil fuel projects from the end of 2021.
Eastern Mediterranean countries are also guilty of combating global warming, all, with the notable exception of Turkey, have signed the Paris Agreement and have emissions relief programmes, and Greece and Cyprus will participate in the EU’s effort to reduce greenhouse fuel emissions by 50-55% by 2030, and this parameter deserves to become law , as planned. Cyprus is already well behind its objectives and faces EU fines if it is not up to date.
Moreover, the lobby’s statement of herbal fuels that fuel is a green-dyed “bridge” power on the way to a carbon-free world has never sounded so false. A wide variety of recent studies show that herbal fuel, which is basically composed of methane, can be much more destructive to the climate than previously thought. Methane is a powerful greenhouse fuel that, in the first two decades after its release, is 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide, according to the US-based Environmental Defense Fund. But it’s not the first time Methane is released from the extraction, shipment and processing of herbal fuel and, in its export form, liquefied herbal fuel.
Environmental degradation is another valid explanation for why not drill. The effect of drilling on Mediterranean herbal ecosystems has played a vital role in the bans imposed in the western seas and is no less applicable to the fragile eastern Mediterranean. (The prohibitions in force were driven by environmentalists and the tourism industry, the latter no less than the drilling or debris that pollutes spas. )
Hellenic Pit is a deep-sea sanctuary of exclusive and endangered marine mammals, such as sperm whales, fin whales, Cuvier’s spruce whales, dolphins, Mediterranean monk seals and loggerhead turtles. In 2018, a hundred world-renowned environmental scientists and equipment wrote to Ask Athens to cancel trench exploration. Several aquatic species “in the Helenic well already face a number of direct and serious threats,” the experts wrote, which come with navigation noise, boat collisions, overpesca, plastic pollutants and climate change. .
Finally, herbal fuel is an incredibly bad investment at a time when fossil fuels are being removed from the market. Not only are the ‘green credentials’ of herbal fuel shredded, which can cause a political reaction to the fuel that would condemn it, but the coronavirus pandemic has also caused a drop in fuel value. Its record value, which is now sold even for less than coal energy, has backed demand, but not to a value that makes your business viable.
Extremely deep seabeds and long pipelines to the mainland make deep-sea fuel very expensive to extract and deliver. “Mediterranean fuel will have to locate markets in countries in the region where it can be delivered at low cost and where decarbonisation is not the case in government programmes,” jonathan Stern tells me of the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies in the UK.
“The export of fuel from the eastern Mediterranean to Europe did not even make industry at cost in 2017 and 2018,” when they were about twice as high as today, Stern said. “But now it’s out of the question. “
By the time the fuel from Hellenic Trench sites reached the pipelines, in the late 2020s or early 2030s, the price of carbon and other deterrents would particularly reduce revenue. .
“These wells will be orphaned,” said Toby Couture of Berlin-based consultancy E3 Analytics, “and the public budget will control cleaning and overhaul prices. “
Eastern Mediterranean countries have earned the proposals of the world’s largest oil giants, such as Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Spain’s Repsol and French conglomerate Total, all of which have been for new opportunities since they were prevented from drilling elsewhere. The player in the global fuel market might seem tempting to political leaders in the region, but it is illusory.
The EU can play a constructive role in the clash between Greece and Turkey by helping the three sides to demand a moratorium (20 for one or two years in the first place) in exploring and concentrating on renewable energy. Greece, Cyprus and Turkey have incredibly favourable situations for blank energy production, which deserve to exploit, with as much EU help as possible, that fighting in fuel fields that will only pose unrest in the coming years.
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