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Last night, the Greek Ministry of Environment and Climate Change banned the export of electricity. The measure has been imposed to prevent the eventual collapse of the power supply system in the country. The ban becomes effective from midday Wednesday and will be valid for an indefinite period of time.

The ministerial decision states that the measure was taken in view of the reduced number of existing thermal plants, the ban on the export of electricity from Bulgaria and Macedonia, the state of emergency in the Greek distribution system for natural gas due to the lack of supplies and bad weather conditions.

This is the third measure imposed in recent days to rescue the power system. According to Greek media, it is fully operational and exceeds its capacity for all the above mentioned reasons but the measure was imposed due to insufficient supplies of natural gas to the country, which is due to the suspended supplies of Azeri gas from Turkey. A few days ago, Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz announced that natural gas supplies from Azerbaijan have been completely stopped due to technical problems. On 8 February, the Greek natural gas company DEPA reported that Turkey has stopped gas supplies to Greece and they are not expected to be restored for days. The company confirmed that supplies were halted in the night of 7 February, after falling below 60% of the nominal volume.

According to sources, the decision of the Greek Ministry was inevitable and ought to have been taken much earlier, because the distribution system for natural gas has been in critical condition since January 18. The available reserves of liquefied gas in Revitusa are sufficient to cover consumption for three days. Currently, it all depends on the timely new emergency imports of liquefied gas from DEPA.

For almost a week, 18% of electricity needs have been covered by private natural gas stations. The share of the particularly expensive oil stations of the national electricity company DEI is 6% to 10%. At the same time, the use of hydropower plants is limited due to the particularly low levels of reservoirs.

Meanwhile, Iran's Press TV reported that Tehran has suspended oil exports to six European countries, including Greece. The media website reads, "In response to the latest sanctions imposed by the European Union against Iran’s energy and banking sectors, the Islamic Republic says it is cutting oil exports to Greece, Holland, Spain, Italy, France and Portugal."

The news caused great concern in Athens because Greece is energy dependent on Iranian oil, which it receives on credit.

A little later, a denial by the Iranian oil ministry appeared in Reuters. "We deny this report... If such a decision is made, it will be announced by Iran’s Supreme National Security Council," a representative of the ministry told a reporter of the international news agency.

Following the statement by Press TV, the Brent price jumped by a dollar a barrel and reached 118.35 dollars.

About a month ago, the 27 member states of the European Union adopted a decision to suspend imports of Iranian oil as of 1 July. The authorities in Tehran, in turn, warned that they would cut it in "certain countries" earlier themselves.