Greece: ‘Heading for turmoil in the Aegean?’

Turkey have recently received a special boat with which it will start surveying inside Cyprus’ EEZ

Recently Greece’s creditors expressed their disappointment on the issue of privatizations.

One that is pending without any visible reason is that of DEPA and DESFA the state oil and gas companies since November.

 It seems that from the 5 companies that have expressed interest and are still in the bid giving non-biding offers the two Russian are the favourites as their offers are almost the double from the second.

The state company that arranges the privatizations (TAIPED) said that it is going to accept the highest bid (without any regard on geopolitics).

But it seems that Washington as well as Brussels have a different opinion.

That is why TAIPED changed the clauses and now asks from companies that had left the bid during an earlier stage to come back and make new offers cooperating with any of the five existing ones.

On February 13th it will be signed the agreement between Greece-Italy-Albania on the TAP (Trans Adriatic Pipeline).

There will be present a delegate from Azerbaijan from where the gas will be transported to Europe and which is to decide if TAP will be built rendering Greece’s existing infrastructure useful.

Interestingly the ‘second’ company apart from the two Russian (Gazprom and Negusneft) is the Azerbaijani state oil and gas company SOCAR which is the head of the Shah Deniz joint venture.

SOCAR is said that after the change of clauses will join the two Greek consortiums comprising M&M GasCo, Mytilineos Holdings, Motor Oil Hellas Corinth Refineries and a joint bid by PPF and GEK Terna Holding Real Estate Construction. Bilateral relations with Greece with emphasis on the energy sector are dated back to 2011.

This scheme is supported by US ( U.S. ties with Azerbaijan serve to “contain” Russian and Iranian influence and diversify the European energy sector, See page 50) and the owner of Motor Oil Mr. Vardinoyannis knows personally the President of Azerbaijan Mr. Ilham Aliyev.

On early March Mr. Samaras is going to visit Washington while a trip to Moscow is reported as canceled. At the same time EU is going to decide about bailing out Cyprus (which is accusing of laundering money of the Russian mafia), Russia will decide on easing the terms of the loan it has already extended to Cyprus and Turkey have recently received a special boat with which it will start surveying inside Cyprus’ EEZ and near the Greek island Kastelorizo (inside Greece’s potential EEZ that recently the government leaked that is ready to declare).

At the same time in Athens the 54th round of exploratory talks between Greece and Turkey have started but passing unmentioned.


UPD: It is said that finally Sintez (Negusneft's affiliated company) decided to leave from the bid since its offer (1,9 million euros) was by far the highest but TAIPED hesitated to make decisions and delayed the possess.

UPD1: Sintez on Feb 7th denied that is leaving from the bid. The deadline for the final offers will be on April 12th.