Cyprus
Great Sea Interconnector: survey ship Abeille Marengo leaves Naples for Heraklion, NAVTEX expected in early November for Crete-Cyprus surveys
The French-flagged survey vessel Abeille Marengo has left Naples for Heraklion, with arrival expected on Tuesday, October 27. The seabed surveys for the Greece-Cyprus power cable are due to resume once a NAVTEX is issued in early November, while a second ship, KOBI RUEGG, is already working off Crete.
The time is approaching for the seabed surveys for the Great Sea Interconnector (GSI), the cable that will link Greece and Cyprus electrically, to resume. The French-flagged survey vessel Abeille Marengo has left Naples for Heraklion. Her arrival at the Cretan port is estimated for Tuesday, October 27.
The ship has been chartered by Nexans, the company manufacturing the cable, which requested permission for bathymetric and oceanographic measurements on the seabed between Crete and Cyprus. At Heraklion the vessel will complete her preparation, and work will begin as soon as the relevant NAVTEX is issued, expected in early November.
At sea: the KOBI RUEGG
On Friday afternoon a second survey vessel, the KOBI RUEGG, put to sea from Heraklion. Her mission concerns another project, the East to Med Data Corridor, the data cable that will connect Saudi Arabia with Greece, and she will work in an area of the Greek continental shelf close to that of the GSI. The Heraklion NAVTEX station has issued a NAVTEX for her work, valid from October 23 to 30.
Ankara had issued NAVTEX 1032/26 from its Antalya station for the same surveys, presenting the area as the “Turkish continental shelf”. The Heraklion station answered with a counter-NAVTEX declaring it “invalid”, since the survey lines lie overwhelmingly within the Greek continental shelf.
The ship and the project
The Abeille Marengo is an anchor-handling tug supply (AHTS) offshore support vessel built in 2009, 73.2 metres long, launched as the Maersk Tracer. For her use in Greek territorial waters, the Hellenic Coast Guard had published on October 14 a request for an exemption for a foreign-flagged vessel.
The GSI is a direct-current cable about 1,200 kilometres long that will connect Cyprus’s electricity system with Crete and from there with the European grid. It is a Project of Common Interest with European funding of 657 million euros. Cyprus is today the only EU member state with no electrical interconnection with another country. The seabed surveys east of Crete are where the project has met its biggest obstacles, since Turkey disputes Greek maritime zones in the area. After months of delays and Turkish reactions, the departure of the two vessels suggests that the resumption of the surveys is now a matter of days.