On 26 November 2011 the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES) and the PRIO Cyprus Centre (PCC) jointly organized a one-day conference in Nicosia “Cyprus Offshore Hydrocarbons: Wealth Distribution and Regional Politics.” The conference brought together international specialists and local experts from both communities in Cyprus. This report is based on expanded and updated versions of the papers presented at the conference.
The conference examined the political dimensions of the search for hydrocarbons in offshore Cyprus, especially the impact of these developments on the negotiations to solve the Cyprus problem. By extension, the conference also surveyed the broader implications of hydrocarbon politics for the countries of the Eastern Mediterranean.
An equally important dimension of the hydrocarbon issue concerns wealth management and distribution. Thus part of the conference was designed to contribute to the debate that is just starting in Cyprus on natural resource revenue management. Case studies of resource management in Norway and Sudan enabled a comparison of good and practices in this domain. By the same token, options for wealth distribution in Cyprus, both within and between the two main communities on the island, were also explored.
