DEPA, the Public Gas Corporation, is aiming to utilize all possible natural gas pipeline routes reaching Greece’s borders, which would elevate the country’s role as a regional energy hub and offer it the ability to determine prices, the corporation’s chief executive, Spyros Paleogiannis, told an Economist energy conference in Athens today.

Paleogiannis reminded of the cash-flow problems currently plaguing the domestic market, while also presenting DEPA’s plans to extend networks and also offer gas supply to consumers in regions not linked to gas networks.

DEPA’s chief official underlined the corporation’s efforts being made to secure funds from the EU’s 315 billion-euro investment fund launched last November by European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker.

Palegioannis added that DEPA’s plans were not being confined to the gas market but the wider energy sector.

He forecast that gas consumption in Greece this year would end forty percent below the level registered in 2008, at the onset of the country’s deep and ongoing recession.

Also participating at the conference, the former deputy energy minister Asimakis Papageorgiou called upon the government to protect energy-sector achievements made by the country’s previous administration. He described the government’s policies to date as the “ideoligization of energy security” and an “amateurish mistake”, noting that sector privatizations need to continue.