The US State
Department has created a regional office for energy issues in South Europe and
North Africa and Cyprus has been chosen as its headquarters.The office in
Cyprus will be under the Bureau of Energy Resources (ENR) of the US State
Department.
ENR’s core objectives are:
to manage the geopolitics of today’s energy economy through reinvigorated
energy diplomacy with major producers and consumers, to stimulate the market
forces that will sustain transformational energy policies in terms of alternative
energy, electricity, development, and reconstruction and to expand good
governance, increase transparency, and improve commercially viable and
environmentally sustainable access to the 1.3 billion people without energy
services.
Ambassador Carlos Pascual is
leading the Bureau and Karen Enstrom will head the South Europe and North
Africa office from the US Embassy in Cyprus.
The recent finds of substantial
hydrocarbon deposits off the coast of Cyprus and the announcement of a second
licensing round in the island’s EEZ are certainly behind the decision to make
Cyprus the headquarters of the newly created US State Department's office.