Greece turns to energy as its economic savior

Spiegel Online

In Greek mythology, the sun God Helios, son of Hyperion, drove his chariot across the sky from east to west each day.
Now, energy officials in the financially beleaguered nation are naming a major solar project after Helios and banking on energy more broadly as a possible way out of the financial crisis. That means exploring Poseidon's domain of the sea by expediting plans for oil exploration, offshore wind energy production and, possibly, as a future natural gas hub. It also means completing oil and gas pipelines and privatizing state-owned oil, gas and power concerns.

"Energy is one of the key driving sectors of the economy, much more today than it has been in the past," George Papaconstantinou, Greece's minister for the environment, energy and climate change, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. If you exclude traditional sectors such as tourism, he said, energy "is probably the most dynamic sector, at the moment, in Greece. And it's the one that will be driving investment in 2012 and beyond."
The potential upside for the economy is direly needed. The country of roughly 12 million borrowed its way to near oblivion in recent years, amassing €204 billion ($267 billion) in debt by 2006 and running large budget deficits. Greece's public debt rose to 160 percent of gross domestic product in 2010, putting it at the forefront of the world's most indebted economies.