A consortium of Italy’s Eni ENI.MI and France’s TotalEnergies TTEF.PA has found more natural gas off Cyprus, boosting Europe’s hopes for a clean break from Russian gas.

An estimated preliminary quantity of 2.0-3.0 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of natural gas was found at the Zeus 1 well in an offshore area known as Block 6, the two companies and the country’s energy ministry said on Wednesday.

It is the third consecutive discovery in Block 6 and ‘confirms the promising outlook for the area and its development’, Eni said.

The east Mediterranean has yielded some of the largest natural gas discoveries in the past decade and Wednesday’s discovery comes as the European Union is looking for new gas supply sources following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The consortium in August reported an estimated 2.5 tcf discovery in the Cronos-1 well in Block 6, and quantities found in Calypso-1 in 2018.

Cyprus has licenced several blocks rimming its southern coast. It reported its first natural gas discovery in 2011, though quantities have yet to come online.

Its exploration programme is hotly disputed by Turkey, which invaded Cyprus’s northern third in 1974 after a brief Greek inspired coup.

Ankara cites overlapping jurisdictions either on its own continental shelf, or in waters of a breakaway Turkish Cypriot state only it recognises in north Cyprus.

Cyprus’s internationally recognised Greek Cypriot government, viewed as representing the whole island, dismisses those claims.
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Michele Kambas in Nicosia and in Federico Maccioni in Milan; Editing by Mark Potter and Arun Koyyur)