Contracts offering three consortiums hydrocarbon exploration and exploitation at sea and land plots in western Greece were submitted to Parliament for ratification yesterday by the Environment, Energy & Climate Change Minister Yiannis Maniatis.

Details of the deals, which were signed in May, include options for exploitation period extensions from 25 to 35 years, conditions committing exploration firms to investing 78 million euro during the initial stages of exploration – five to eight years – as well as provisions for investors to co-exploit adjacent discoveries located on both sides of a plot’s border.

Last May’s deals were signed by the Greek government with Energean Oil and Canadian firm Petra Petroleum for an overland site in Ioannina, western Greece; Hellenic Petroleum, or ELPE, Italy’s Edison, and Irish firm Petroceltic for a region in the Gulf of Patras; and, once again, Energean Oil in another deal with UK firm Trajan Oil for a spot in Katakolo, western Peloponnese.

The details of these three deals will help shape a series of upcoming exploration-and-exploitation agreements for twenty sea plots in western Greece and south of Crete. International tenders for these are expected to be published in the Official Journal of the European Union around mid-September.

The consortiums involved in the three deals just submitted to Parliament have declared that their total investments could reach 700 million euro. It is estimated that up to 300 million barrels of oil may be discovered in the areas to be explored by the three consortiums, a quantity that could generate revenues of up to 27 billion dollars over a 35-year period. In this event, the Greek state’s earnings can be estimated to reach between five billion to eight billion dollars.