Shipping in Cyprus

Cyprus has the fourth-largest ship registry in the world, with 2,758 ships and 25.5 million gross registered tons. It constitutes one of the largest ship management centers in the world; around 50 ship management companies and marine-related foreign enterprises are conducting their international activities in the country while the majority of the largest ship management companies in the world have established fully fledged offices on the island. Its geographical position at the crossroads of three continents and its proximity to the Suez Canal has promoted merchant shipping as an important industry for the island nation. As of 2005 Cyprus holds the 9th largest (by DWT) merchant navy in the world and the 3rd largest in the European Union.

Energy in Cyprus

The south eastern Mediterranean is home to vast reserves of natural gas. Noble Energy has already got promising results from the Leviathan gas field, off the coast of Israel Surveys suggest more than 100 trillion cubic feet (2.831 trillion cubic meters) of reserves lie untapped in the eastern Mediterranean basin between Cyprus and Israel - almost equal to the world's total annual consumption of natural gas. Noble Energy apparently reckons a pipeline could be in operation as soon as 2015.

In addition to the stream of revenues from the future export of the islands gas reserves, the emergence of this new industry and the possible direct foreign investment in significant infrastructure projects such as the liquefaction plant and the pipeline facilities will create the need for great number of support services. All these are expected to least to the creation of thousands of jobs and will in turn boost the construction industry and property market as well as having favorable indirect effect on many other sectors of the economy such as financial and professional services.

Furthermore, it will alleviate the over-reliance of the economy on financial services and tourism and will diversify the risk of the economy in the eyes of foreign investors.