WASHINGTON — The top energy official in the Cyprus government told Breitbart News exclusively that President Donald Trump’s engagement on “energy security” is “vital” to the future of the west.
Michael Damianos, the Minister of Energy, Commerce, and Industry for the Republic of Cyprus, sat for an exclusive interview with Breitbart News last month when he was in the United States for a series of meetings about Cyprus’s future of pursuing natural gas exploration and development in the coming months and years. During the interview, Damianos made clear that the Cypriot government believes that Trump pursuing energy dominance is extremely important for his region but also for the whole world. Cyprus is a member of the European Union, but it also is the closest European nation to the Middle East. The island, which is mostly controlled by Greek Cypriots who comprise the Republic of Cyprus, also has a small portion of the northern part of the island currently controlled by Turkish occupants.
“I believe that President Trump’s involvement in this is vital, and I think the mark is there already, and we are delighted that we’re able to work with this administration,” Damianos told Breitbart News. “To be honest, if President Trump wasn’t there with respect to what we’re trying to do, things could have been different. So, we’re delighted that President Trump is personally looking into this.”
Damianos added that he wanted to be sure “we do get out that we consider the U.S. involvement in the area as fundamental for the area’s energy security.”
“We are here [in the United States last month] because Cyprus is and wants to be a reliable partner for the U.S.,” Damianos said. “The U.S. can rely on us. We are an EU country, a small country, a democratic country in the area that can support the interests of our partners, and we’re happy that we’re moving on furthering this relationship.”
“So we are on board, we support the initiatives, we like what we see, and we hope that this is going to be proceeding, and we’re going to further our relationship as far as we can,” he added.
Damianos’s interview came after his counterpart in Greece, the Greek Minister of Environment and Energy, Stavros Papastavrou, told Breitbart News that Trump’s “trademark move” in diplomacy is using energy policy to advance economic interests of all parties. Trump himself posted that article from Breitbart News on Truth Social, and the president has regularly talked about the importance of energy—particularly natural gas and oil—as a key marker to advance the interests of the United States and more broadly the interests of western civilization.
Importantly, the Greeks are in the process of beginning natural gas exploration in the Eastern Mediterranean—or East Med, for short—in their waters off the coasts of various Greek islands. But the Cypriots are arguably even further along than the Greeks are right now, and have identified significant amounts of natural gas in their waters in the East Med. This success in Cyprus has American energy companies like Chevron and Exxon-Mobil mobilizing in a big way to extract the natural gas, which could power Cyprus for centuries and provide generations of electricity and power to the rest of Europe and to other partners in the region like Israel and Egypt.
Damianos told Breitbart News that the so-called 3+1 partnership between Greece, Israel, Cyprus, and the United States has been critical for energy production and for security in the region.
“So basically we’re here for a few days in Washington, and then following on Houston,” Damianos told Breitbart News when he was in the U.S. capital in June. “With respect to our meetings in Washington, we had the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum. We have the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Forum. Essentially, what we’re putting forward is our position with respect to Cyprus’s strategy on energy, especially with respect to exploration in the East Med which is extremely important, and it is proceeding with a fast pace these days. It’s actually extremely important to be aligned with our partners, both in the area and globally. With respect to the area, the 3+1 partnership is extremely important in the sense that Israel is an extremely important partner for us both with respect to energy but with respect to everything else as well. We’re very close and have very close ties. Greece is an extremely important player for Cyprus as well, and for the U.S. So, have this regional cooperation, the three of us, with the assistance and the help and the coordination and the guidance, sometimes with respect to the U.S., which is extremely important. So this is let’s say along the umbrella of this partnership. So what we’re doing in Washington these days is to make sure that we pass our own message, we pass the message that Cyprus is here to proceed with the exploration of our hydrocarbons, we have significant reserves—we have about 20 Tcf [trillion cubic feet] of reserves—so it is important to be able to get this out.”
The two big American energy companies—Chevron and Exxon-Mobil—are active in Cyprus, something Damianos said is extremely important. They are operating in differing fields of natural gas under the sea, each of which has names like Aphrodite or Pegasus or Glaucus.
“I think the most important thing to mention is that we do have the two big oil majors in Cyprus—we have Chevron, we have Exxon-Mobil—so we are proceeding in a fast pace with both of them and have a very good relationship with respect,” Damianos said. “They are the operators—Chevron is the operator in Aphrodite, Exxon-Mobil are the operators in the other in Pegasus, in Pegasus and Glaucus, so we are proceeding in a good place with them, but I think the important thing to say is that we consider the involvement of these entities as tantamount for us, for the country. We consider the involvement of the U.S. in terms of policy and assistance in the area, and when I’m saying the area I mean the overall East Med from Greece onwards. It is extremely important with respect to energy security. So I think it’s the involvement of the U.S. both itself, I mean, as a country, but also with respect to the Chevron and Exxon being in the area and other smaller entities in the oil and gas sector—it is extremely important. With respect to energy security, it will provide both assistance—both in respect to actually getting the gas out, but also ensuring that we know what to do with it—so it is quite important.”
Damianos said the abundance of natural gas in Cyprus’s economic zone is astounding. Experts, he said, have identified about 20 Tcf or trillion cubic feet of natural gas among the various Cypriot natural gas repositories in its economic zone. Just one Tcf, he said, would power Cyprus—which has about a million people—for centuries.
“In terms, when you have 20 Tcf—20 Tcf is widespread within our own EZ [economic zone], so it depends on how much we’ll be able to get out—and these 20 Tcf are the existing reserves, we’re hoping, and we’re fairly confident we will have much more in the future,” Damianos said. “In terms of how to put it, it’s difficult to put in a global perspective but in Cyprus we’re a million people… So, with respect to our own needs, one Tcf will be something like our needs for hundreds of years, which means that we will be exporting more than 99 percent of what we produce. So we have, for the needs of a small country—the numbers are huge. So are the numbers generally, the assistance that we can provide to to the area—when I say assistance, obviously, with the help of our partners and the partners are the energy companies that take the gas out. So the idea is that we help the area around, and we provide stability and security in the East Med through the secure gas.”
Some of the gas will go to Egypt and from there he said “it will be sold to the European market.”
“So, it’s important for the companies, it’s important for Egypt, it’s important for Cyprus, it’s important for the EU because it will provide more stability for the European market because the European market was reliant up to a few years ago on the Russian gas—that reliance goes down,” Damianos said. “It helps Europe as well, with respect to Aphrodite, which is Chevron. The agreement is for this to be sold to Egypt, so it’s for the internal market of Egypt. Egypt, it’s about 120 million people, so they need more gas than their own reserves. Their own reserves have been around for decades so they’re running out. So Aphrodite, the assistance of Chevron operators, new net Israelis—there’s a part of Aphrodite, of the reservoir, that falls into the Israeli EZ, so generally agreement is on a variety will end up in in Egypt. Then with respect to the other, Glaucus and Pegasus, which are something between five and six Tcf—and that’s Exxon, and we’re actually delighted that is actually Exxon, one of the biggest oil and gas companies in the world with substantial experience in deep water in this kind of exploration, and with the ability to ensure that we are going to be getting the gas out.”
The specifics are still being worked out with Chevron and Exxon-Mobil as to getting the gas out of the sea, but the Cypriots are very optimistic that the next several decades are going to see the region become a major hub for energy.
“I think the idea is that the EZ of Cyprus between 2028 and maybe 20 years from now we’re going to have quite a bit of gas to get out so we consider that we can be a player of stability in the area, along with partners and of course with assistance and the blessing of I would say for the U.S., especially through the involvement of Exxon and Chevron, but generally because of this 3+1 partnership, which is extremely important,” Damianos said. “We do have the reserves. Greece has the reserves. We’re a bit ahead of Greece. That’s fine. The rest of Europe it’s not a question of what kind of reserves they have—plus what kind of energy they can get out. The ideas for them was to use a bit more renewables, I guess.”
What’s more, some of the other European nations that may have rich deposits of natural gas are possibly “missing out” on the economic boom that comes with unleashing energy production that awaits Cyprus and Greece.
“In the north of Europe, we’re not talking EU, is Norway, so it’s out of the EU, so was so, is let’s say the North Sea. With respect to the UK, even though there’s not much there. Are they missing out? They’re definitely missing out,” Damianos told Breitbart News. “Gas is there to stay, I think. I think for decades it’s even if we consider it to be the bridge kind of fuel, which probably leads to the green transition, I think, we will have been needing gas for at least 30 years so we’re in a good position to be able to support the region and wherever we can with respect to getting this gas out. So it’s not a matter of missing out as I think it’s a matter of maybe not having quite the reserve. Romania seems to have a bit of the reserves, but I think the major player in Europe will be Greece. Greece has the reserves. You have the southern corridor with respect to the U.S. gas, which will be supporting the North, from Alexandroupolis to Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova, Ukraine, which is also quite important. So, I think we get it. I think Greece gets it, and it’s important to be able to proceed, but as I said, energy is very geopolitical, so we need the right partnerships to be able to do what we’re planning to do.”
But again, for this all to work, Damianos stresses the importance of what President Trump is doing in terms of having the United States as a critical partner in the effort.
“I think what we have to say, and if there was one message I would pass through, it would be that the U.S. presence and connection to these is fundamental to our energy security,” Damianos said. “By saying our energy security, I mean the East Med. It’s important for the U.S., especially with respect to economic actors—Exxon and Chevron—and any other oil, gas, or any other U.S. companies willing to invest and participate in the Eastern Mediterranean to actually do so because we do believe that the U.S. will be assisting in being a factor of stability in our region, and we’re hopeful that the partnership that has started in the last years will be proceeding with for the decades to come to ensure that we do have this energy security, which is important for the world and is important for the region. It can be important for the U.S., especially through the partnerships that the U.S. is having in the area. And, as I said, in the 3+1 partnership, it’s actually important, especially through the connection of Israel and Greece. I want to pass the message that Cyprus is and will be a reliable partner for the U.S. in the years to come.”
One of the big meetings Damianos attended in the United States in June was the establishment at Rice University in Houston of the Eastern Mediterranean Energy Center alongside officials from the U.S., Greek, and Israeli governments too. He said that center’s founding “is another sign of President Trump’s administration position with respect to furthering this relationship, and we’re delighted with respect to that because especially we are a small country and we need all the help that we can get from the U.S. with basically doing what we plan to do.”
“We are delighted that we’re looking at things the same way. I think from discussions that we had with U.S. officials, it seems that this is something that is being taken very, very seriously in general, but specifically as well,” Damianos added.
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