The President of the Republic Mr. Nicos Christodoulides, who received today a delegation from TOTAL in Paris, where he is visiting at the invitation of French President Emmanuel Macron.
In his statements to the media after the meeting, the President of the Republic said: "I had a very constructive discussion with the heads of TOTAL, a discussion that focused on two issues.
The first concerns the information I received on the future handling of the company, the licensed plots within the EEZ.
After expressing our pleasure and satisfaction with TOTAL's interest, I noted, and here I come to the second issue, how we can at the same time exploit the deposits that are within the EEZ, with the aim on the one hand, and this is our main objective, to serve the internal market, to deal with the issue, the problem of high electricity prices and secondly, taking into account the limited size of the Cypriot market, how to exploit the remaining available reserves for the needs of the EU at a time when a significant effort is being made for energy decoupling on the part of the EU.
In the next few days I will seek to have a joint meeting with all the companies involved in the Exclusive Economic Zone of the Republic of Cyprus to see whether there can be synergies, partnerships, which will aim to exploit the available reserves in the Cypriot EEZ, first for the internal market and then for export to Europe. And this is something on which we will have to take decisions very soon.
I am very well aware, both during the election campaign and after I took office, that at the level of society, and rightly so, there is dissatisfaction, many questions about the fact that for so many years we have not proceeded with exploitation. We are here precisely to address and answer these legitimate concerns and legitimate questions and I hope that in the very near future we will have data on the basis of which, very specifically, we will talk to Cypriot society about the next steps in relation to our energy plans.
We know very well what we want to do, we know what our priorities are, first the internal market and then, through synergies and cooperation in the region, to exploit for export to the EU and to other countries.
