Cyprus Energy Minister George Lakkotrypis said that a legal formula had been found and the two sides were at the stage of negotiating on the legal documents.

“If we are successful, the company will be here at least until February 2016”, he said.

Alluding to Turkey’s actions in the Cyprus Exclusive Economic Zone, Lakkotrypis said the formula with Total was a vindication of the government’s position that “the Total move was not a result of political expediencies. We are simply dealing with geology and pure economics.”

Meanwhile, on Wednesday Noble Energy presented its development programme for the exploitation of the Aphrodite field in Block 12.

“This is just the start of a long road,” said Lakkotrypis.

He said that the meeting with Noble was only the second one at technical level and “many more will follow until the plan for the commercial exploitation of Block 12’s established reserves is finalised and the government issues a relevant licence”.

In answer to questions Lakkotrypis also confirmed reports of Jordanian interest in Cyprus’ natural gas and the arrival in Nicosia of Jordanian energy officials, noting that if there was something to be made public, it would be done so in due course.

“We are very interested in Jordan as they are in energy cooperation with us,” he said. There are certain technical matters to be looked into, he stressed, such as the course of the pipeline to Jordan, structural support and other similar considerations. He underlined that these were also issues that had to be discussed with other potential buyers too.

Source: InCyprus