Is There Oil in Greece? Oil Exploration and Scientific Conflict during the First Years of the Greek Geological Survey (1917–1925)

Abstract

When Konstantinos Ktenas and Georgios Georgalas, the two most prominent
interwar Greek geologists, began their respective careers around 1910, they were already
enmeshed in a tense occupational and scientific conflict. The following decade, fraught with
war and political upheaval, acted as a powerful “context of motivation” for their research and
occupational strategies. The result was a host of scientific and institutional endeavours such
as the founding of a Greek Geological Survey, the first attempts to assess the Greek lignite
deposits, and involvement in consecutive oil exploration attempts that took place in Epirus
between 1920 and 1937. As it turns out, the confrontational relation between the two geologists
was actually productive. It signalled the emergence of a Greek geological community. It
institutionalised the relations between this geological community and the Greek state. Most
importantly, it produced a fusion of geological knowledge, tacit political calculation and
obscure rhetoric that still remains in use to define the “reality” of the “Greek oil deposits”.