What a trial we’re living through: electric shock, non-stop

Opinion EACelectricityturkey What a trial we’re living through: electric shock, non-stop Pefths Ahk 1536x1022 Relevant News New blaze near Skarinou: “Particularly dangerous day,” fire chief warns 23 July 2026 What a trial we’re living through: electric shock, non-stop 23 July 2026 Digital TV switch: viewers urged to retune before October 10 deadline 23 July 2026 Aristos Michaelides 23 July 2026 FacebookXWhatsAppEmailPrintViber Do you get it? Do you actually get what’s going on around us? Do you see what we’re being put through? Turkey is laying a pipeline under the sea to pump gas to the occupied north, and then, quite possibly, to us. Infrastructure finished by the end of 2026, gas flowing by 2028. And us? We’re planning to put out tenders for new generators for the EAC, so that we might, just might, have enough electricity after 2030. Yes. After 2030. For now, every time there’s a heatwave and we need our air conditioning so we don’t drop dead from the heat, we get warned we might not even manage that, given what the system is producing. Like yesterday. Like today. So the cuts begin. Electricity supply, they say, is at its limits, because two production units, one in Vasilikos and one in Dhekelia, are out of action. And the system, if you can even call it that, chaos is closer to the mark, is running on fumes. Year after year they announce this as though it’s happening for the first time. What a farce. Same story every summer, every winter. Incompetence through the roof. And sitting alongside it, the vested interests that now have their hands on our energy too, right down to solar storage, which we still haven’t seen. Neither has the gas turned up. Nor the ship we bought for €200 million. Nor the terminal at Vasilikos, which has already swallowed more than €600 million and which nobody can say for certain will ever get built. Nor the electricity interconnector that was supposed to end our energy isolation, or so we were told. Do you understand now? We’re living on the edge of despair. A theme park of horrors. Carry on like this and we’ll end up saying: let’s just be grateful we’re alive! Even if it is on the edge. I’ve written this before, but it bears repeating. Do you know when the decision was taken to secure natural gas for electricity generation? Because the date matters, it tells you exactly how long we’ve known we needed this. It was decided on 8 October 2001, by the government of Glafkos Clerides. Commerce Minister Nikos Rolandis announced it after a cabinet meeting. He was supremely confident, too. “The matter of gas supply to Cyprus has now begun moving towards realisation,” he said. The EAC, he explained, “is already preparing to run its fourth unit on natural gas.” He even gave a date: “We’re pencilling this in for around 2006.” Twenty-five years on from that decision, it’s still “moving towards realisation.” Lost somewhere in orbit. Rolandis also announced, in December 2002, the decision to build an energy hub at Vasilikos, complete with a terminal for receiving, regasifying and storing natural gas. That hasn’t moved either. On the strength of these decisions, the EAC jumped on board and sank €450 million into combined-cycle generating units, so it could switch them from diesel to gas — starting, mark the year, in 2008. And all these years, with the gas never arriving, those units have been running on diesel instead, wrecking themselves in the process. 2007 brought more decisions. Tassos Papadopoulos’s government decided to press ahead with a floating unit as a stopgap, to get gas flowing quickly and finally bring down the EAC’s costs, and our bills. But parliamentary approval got swallowed up in the run-up to the presidential election. The EAC’s unions kicked off, assorted other interests worked against it behind the scenes (the same vested interests I mentioned above), the arguing dragged on for months, and in the end we got neither a floating unit nor a land-based one. Summers come and go, winters come and go, and we live permanently under the threat of an electricity supply running on empty, whether it’s a heatwave or a cold snap. We should, by now, more than a decade overdue and proven beyond doubt, have our own natural gas. But we won’t be bringing that in either, it seems. By the time the Turks do what they’re planning in the occupied north, we’ll still be going round and round on this horror-show carousel. And the moment they announce they can sell cheap electricity to the free areas too, don’t think for one second that some people won’t jump at it. Subscribe to our Newsletter Latest News New blaze near Skarinou: “Particularly dangerous day,” fire chief warns Digital TV switch: viewers urged to retune before October 10 deadline Two arrested over livestreamed footage in case involving child with disability Family of Limassol wildfire victims still seeking answers, one year on Trozena investment awaits make-or-break environment ruling British Bases donate €54,000 to local communities across Cyprus Southeast Asia hosts security gathering amid Middle East turmoil Follow en.philenews on Google News and be the first to know all the news about Cyprus and the world.