Cyprus Hydrocarbons Company (CHC)

CHC is the commercial and technical arm of the Republic of Cyprus in the upstream sector. Its core mandate is the commercial management of the state's ownership rights in Cypriot hydrocarbons: marketing and selling the Republic's share of gas from producing fields, participating in commercial negotiations with operators and buyers, and advising the Ministry of Energy, Commerce and Industry on licensing, development plans and gas monetization.

Unlike the international operators active in the EEZ, CHC holds no operated acreage and drills no wells. Its significance is institutional: as fields like Cronos, Aphrodite and the Block 10 hub move toward production, CHC is the vehicle through which the Republic's gas entitlement will be commercialized — making it a counterparty in every export arrangement Cyprus signs.

CHC is a private limited liability company wholly owned by the state, prescribed by the Council of Ministers as the entity responsible for managing the Republic's participation in hydrocarbon prospecting, exploration and exploitation under Article 16 of the Hydrocarbons (Prospection, Exploration and Exploitation) Law of 2007. It traces to Council of Ministers decision no. 73.493 of 2 May 2012 (establishing the original national hydrocarbons company as the Republic's commercial arm), decision no. 75.903 of 16 October 2013 (articles of association and formal authorization), and its restructuring into the present CHC in March 2014.

The company is governed by a board of seven non-executive directors appointed by the Council of Ministers and run by a professional executive team spanning geoscience through production. Professor Toula Onoufriou, Professor of Infrastructure Reliability and Management at the Cyprus University of Technology, serves as President of the board. Beyond upstream, CHC's mandate extends to managing any state commercial participation in midstream infrastructure — pipelines and land-based LNG — and its stated vision includes offshore renewable energy in the Cypriot EEZ.

All three Cypriot development tracks create future commercial roles for CHC. The Cronos plan approved in May 2026 routes gas to Egypt's Damietta LNG via the Zohr facilities; Aphrodite's April 2026 term sheet commits its full output to Egypt's EGAS; and the Block 10 Glaucus–Pegasus hub was declared commercial in June 2026. In each case the state's share of production — and thus CHC's sales book — is defined by the production-sharing terms of the underlying licences.