Category: Cyprus

I live in Cyprus for many years now. It is a beautiful little island in Mediterranean Sea. It features warm weather for most of the year, sea, very kind and hospital people, plenty of jobs in IT industry, good food and plenty of alcohol, stable currency, and more. It’s really a nice place to live if you can handle small towns and villages. It’s also a great place to raise the kids.

Not much happens here. It is a quiet and simple place. Yet, when something happens or when I write about it, I post it to Cyprus category.

Is Cyprus ready for the oil and gas exploration?

Cyprus Mail reports that “President will not be put off drilling for gas“:

“We have decided that Noble Energy will proceed in the forthcoming period with the exploratory drilling to find out the quantity and the quality of hydrocarbons,” he said.

The president added that drilling would provide clear evidence of whether potential deposits exist, something for which geological surveys have shown “the probability is very high”.

Christofias highlighted it was Cyprus’ sovereign right, based on international law and the Law of the Sea, to start gas exploration in its EEZ, underlining that “all our decisions and actions so far, stem from international law and strictly fall into this parameter”.

Given how the President handled the Mari naval base explosion, I wouldn’t trust the guy with the keys to my car, let alone drilling for gas.  I mean, I am for Cyprus benefiting from these resources and all.  But a project like that is legally, technically, financially, and politically huge.  Someone has to organize and manage that.  And current President haven’t shown any particular talent in managing anything yet.  Even of a much smaller and simpler scale.  The potential for disaster is huge here, and I don’t think Cyprus needs another one of those.  Not now, not ever.

Cyprus crude oil production by year

All the recent hype about oil and gas reserved discovery and exploration off the shores of Cyprus got me digging into the subject.   Here is one of the first graphs I found, which helps so much in understanding the current state of affairs.  Courtesy of Index Mundi website.

Just in case you prefer it in a table with raw data form, they have it for you there as well.

A lesson in geography perhaps, Mr.President?

Cyprus Mail does an extensive coverage of the explosion investigation (several articles, I’m only linking to the one I quote).  The President of Cyprus, Dimitris Christofias, was also questioned and gave a few statements.  Some of his words are rather unbelievable.

Christofias also denied it was him who decided where to put the munitions, adding that he had never visited the Evangelos Florakis naval base at Mari, which neighbours the Vassilikos power station, before the blast. “If I knew the proximity to the power station I would not have accepted them being stored there,” Christofias said.

Say what?  I mean, I can understand that Cyprus is covered with villages big and small, some with duplicate names.  But this place is special.  It is the largest naval base in Cyprus.  And it has the power station that was responsible for about 60% of all power supply. This location must be on every single strategic plan this country has.  This should be one of the things you know before you accept the responsibility of leading this country.  EPIC FAIL.

Ayia Napa is on fire … not literally of course

Cyprus Mail reports that Ayia Napa enjoys the best tourism year in the last 10 years.

A MASSIVE increase in tourism from Russia, more bookings from Britain and instability in the Middle East have helped kick-start a tourism boom in Ayia Napa which is being lauded as the best year in a decade.

It was announced yesterday that hotel occupancy in Ayia Napa and Protaras reached full capacity during the summer period with the added bonus of the holiday season stretching till November

.I’ve been to Ayia Napa and Protaras a couple of weeks ago and it was obvious that the situation with tourists there is very different from Limassol.  Crowds and crowds of people on the streets, and everywhere.  In Protaras it was even difficult to walk through in the evening – so many people around.  When we drove back to Limassol, it was empty like a deserted island.  Someone in the car suggested that that might be because we came back later in the evening, but I disagreed.  It only takes about an hour and a half to drive from Protaras to Limassol. And there was no way all those people in Protaras could have disappeared from the streets in that time frame.  Now, the newspaper confirms that the situation over there is indeed different.

Civil servants salaries in Cyprus

Cyprus Mail reports:

Around 65 per cent of civil servants (some 35,000) are paid wages that are substantially higher than the national average.

And if that wasn’t enough,

The discrepancy between the wages of civil servants and the general population may be substantial, yet even this is slightly misleading. Civil servants’ salaries weigh heavily in calculating the average national salary. It follows that the figure for the average national salary, as given by the Statistical Service, is “bumped up” by the high wages received by civil servants, thereby concealing the true extent of the difference between public and private sectors.

The numbers breakdown follows:

Civil servants wages (May 2011)
Salary Number of recipients
€0 – €1500 10,871
€1501 – €2500 16,465
€2501 – €3500 14,449
€3501 – €4500 6,866
€4501 and above 5,360

Read the rest of the article for more details.