Top govt meeting in Athens focuses on energy security

A top government meeting, chaired by PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis, convened on Wednesday to consider the now urgent issue of energy sufficiency, in the wake of Russian natgas supplier Gazprom’s controversial decisions a day earlier.

Greece’s next payments to the Russian energy giant are scheduled for the first 10-day period of May, i.e. next month.

As per the leitmotif heard from official lips in Athens over the past month, the country is “shielded” from any disruption in supplies.

The Mitsotakis government has scrambled over the past few weeks, similar to many other countries in Europe, in order to secure natural gas supplies and other energy sources. For Greece, this means increasing supply and storage capacity at the all-important Revythoussa LNG terminal off the port of Piraeus and jump-starting lignite mining and exploitation in northern Greece.

The coming summer season also means zero need for indoor heating and an increase in power production from renewable sources (solar, wind).