‘Doublespeak': Greece greenlights offshore drilling beside marine park

Euronews

14-03-2025

Greece is allowing US fossil fuel giant Chevron to drill next to a protected coastal area, sparking a legal complaint from green NGOs.
The government announced in January that it would be opening up new areas for offshore oil and gas exploration, after Chevron and national company HELLENiQ Energy expressed interest in more sites.
Carved out of Greece's Ionian coastline, they surround marine protected areas (MPAs) set aside to safeguard endangered species such as whales, dolphins, Monk seals and Loggerhead turtles.
At the same time, Greece's environment ministry said it would expand MPAs in the Ionian Sea as part of its plans to create a national marine park. This 'expansion' isn't news, exactly; the seabed in question is being relinquished by HELLENiQ because it has finished exploring the marine plot and does not want to exploit it.
These dual developments show a kind of 'doublespeak' by the Greek government, and 'can only be perceived as a bad joke,' says Greenpeace Greece. 'Mining and protecting marine life do not fit together.'
Environmental lawyers at ClientEarth are urging the European Commission to stop what they say is unlawful drilling in a delicate environment.
It follows previous action from the NGO, alongside Greenpeace and WWF Greece, to fight Greece's greenlighting of offshore drilling near protected areas, known as Natura 2000 sites.
The three organisations filed a formal complaint with the Commission in December 2023, accusing Greece of 'systematically' giving a free pass to companies, and flouting EU laws by not carrying out proper environmental impact assessments.
Last December, the Commission finally confirmed it will 'seek clarifications' on how the Greek authorities arrived at their approval decisions for projects. Its investigation is ongoing, meanwhile the new sites offered for drilling are even closer to the MPAs than those that triggered the lawyers' original complaint.
'Ecosystems that work are one of our principal allies in the climate fight - their importance cannot be overstated and protecting nature should be an absolute priority. But what we're seeing here is whales, dolphins, turtles and vital seabed ecology being sacrificed for fossil fuels,' says ClientEarth lawyer Francesco Maletto.
'This is upside-down decision-making and we're depending on the European Commission to put a stop to it.'
The Hellenic Trench, which runs from the northern Ionian Sea to south of Crete, is a marine biodiversity hotspot of global ecological importance, the lawyers stress. Scientific evidence shows that the drilling, loud seismic waves and increase in vessels that hydrocarbon exploration and extraction bring could imperil this vital ecosystem.
Despite recognising its value by planning to establish an Ionian marine park (now postponed until mid-2025), the legal team believes the Greek government is clearly being swayed by fossil fuel interests.
'Chevron's interest, combined with the fact that ExxonMobil is already active in our country, marks the simultaneous presence of two energy giants and reinforces the belief that Greece can play a leading role in the global energy market and confirms that our country is an attractive investment destination,' the ministry said in January.
'As the Eastern Mediterranean is fast becoming a climate hell-zone, there's absolutely no room for new oil and gas,' says Anna Vafeiadou, legal sector leader of WWF Greece.
'We urge the European Commission to uphold its role as guardian of the EU Treaties.'
A spokesperson for the Commission confirmed to Euronews Green that it received ClientEarth's letter in February, and will reply in due course. 'The Commission is still conducting its investigation and is in contact with the Greek authorities,' they added.
Global sea levels rose faster than expected in 2024 as the world experienced its hottest year on record, a new study has found.
This was due to an unusual amount of ocean warming combined with meltwater from land-based ice such as glaciers, according to the NASA-led analysis.
'Every year is a little bit different, but what's clear is that the ocean continues to rise, and the rate of rise is getting faster and faster,' said Josh Willis, a sea level researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
Since the satellite recording of ocean height began in 1993, the rate of annual sea level rise has more than doubled. In total, the global sea level has gone up by 10 centimetres since 1993.
This long-term record is made possible by an uninterrupted series of ocean-observing satellites starting with TOPEX/Poseidon in 1992.
According to the NASA-led study of the information sourced via the Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite, 2024 saw a rate of sea level rise at 0.59 centimetres per year, compared to the expected rate of 0.43 centimetres per year.
The upcoming Sentinel-6B satellite will continue to measure sea surface height down to a few centimetres for about 90 per cent of the world's oceans.
In recent years, about two-thirds of sea level rise was from the addition of water from land into the ocean by melting ice sheets and glaciers. About a third came from thermal expansion of seawater.
But in 2024, those contributions flipped, with two-thirds of sea level rise coming from thermal expansion.
'With 2024 as the warmest year on record, Earth's expanding oceans are following suit, reaching their highest levels in three decades,' said Nadya Vinogradova Shiffer, head of physical oceanography programs at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
There are several ways in which heat makes its way into the ocean, resulting in the thermal expansion of water.
Normally, seawater arranges itself into layers determined by water temperature and density.
Warmer water is lighter and floats on top of cooler water, which is denser. In most places, heat from the surface moves very slowly through these layers down into the deep ocean.
But extremely windy areas of the ocean can agitate the layers enough to result in vertical mixing.
Very large currents, like those found in the Southern Ocean, can tilt ocean layers, allowing surface waters to slip down deep more easily.
The massive movement of water during El Niño - in which a large pool of warm water normally located in the western Pacific Ocean sloshes over to the central and eastern Pacific - can also result in the vertical movement of heat within the ocean.
The UN has warned that rising sea levels are endangering vast numbers of people living on islands or along coastlines.
Particularly vulnerable areas include low-lying coastal communities in India, Bangladesh, China and the Netherlands, as well as island nations in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.