According to the government, provisional data implies that there are oil and gas deposits in a sea area separating the island from Egypt to its south and Lebanon to its east. Cyprus thus opened its first licensing round in 2007, offering 12 areas for exploration, with permits being issued by the end of 2007. The matter may increase tension with Turkey that is claiming they also have rights offshore the island since their invasion of the northern part of the Island in 1974. The licensing round is based on the PGS MC2D acquisition which involved approximately 7000 line-km’s of MC2D seismic data covering an area of 60,000 km2 over the Eratosthenes structure, Levant Basin, and the prolific Nile Delta. The survey is available from November, 2006 and ties all the wells in the Deepwater Nemed Block in Egypt. Noble Energy has been granted one of the blocks offshore Cyprus (block #12). Cyprus is also considering setting up an LNG regasification facility and is in discussions with Egypt for the potential supply of gas. In addition the monopoly Cyprus electricity company which supplies 600,000 consumers is converting some of its power stations to use natural gas, a process which should be completed by 2013, at which stage Cyprus will require between 1 to 1.5 bcm of gas per year