Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras blamed a "harsh winter" in the Greece over the 2016-2017 period for causing a rise in power consumption by 9 percent, in answer a press question on why electricity bills in the recession-battered country have surged up over the recent period.
He spoke during a tour of the energy ministry in Athens on Wednesday, mostly a "photo op" ahead of Thursday's signing of three contracts for off-shore oil and gas exploration in Greece.
Two multinationals, ExxonMobil and Total, will join Greece's biggest petro-chemical group, Hellenic Petroleum, to partner for exploration in various lots south and southwest of Crete and in the Ionian Sea, off western Greece.
The only commercial oil deposits ever discovered and exploited over past decades on Greek territory have were the Prinos I and II fields east of the northern Aegean island of Thassos, although decades-old Turkish intransigence and unilateral claims in the eastern Aegean made exploration a politically sensitive prospect.
ExxonMobil has already acquired a concession for an offshore lot off Cyprus, essentially its first foray into the southeast Mediterranean region in terms of exploration and drilling.
