Prime Minister, Ministers, distinguished audience,

It is a great pleasure to be with you here in Yemen and I´m very grateful for the opportunity to speak to you Life is full of changes. Only yesterday I left my country covered in snow, in a frost of minus seven centigrades. Today I am with you in Yemen, in a blaze of sun and enjoying a temperature we can only dream of in Iceland.

I can confide in you that I already like Yemen so much, that I might be tempted to ask your honourable prime minister for an asylum as a climatic refugee!

Iceland and Yemen are certainly far apart. They belong to different continents, different cultures, and different religion. Yet, we are strangely related. We both belong to the smaller nations of the world, and my government strongly believes that the 21^st century will be the age of the smaller states – if they have the good sense to stick together, share experiences and knowledge – and support each other.

We are both nations of great seafarers. You of course are world famous sea merchants from times past, we were vikings on the seas. The sea is very important to both of us as a source of food, transport and most importantly, we are both – geologically speaking – living on the edge.

Iceland and Yemen are both situated on the boundaries of tectonic plates. As a result we are forced by mother nature to live dangerously in the shadows of earthquakes and eruptions. However, living dangerously sometimes can also have its advantages. As geologically active countries we also are blessed with immense energy below the crust of the earth - in the form of geothermal power.

In Iceland we have learned to live with the earthquakes and learned to harness the geothermal power and turn it into electricity - and wealth. That is not the least reason of the success of Iceland.

I am honoured to have been given the opportunity to deliver a short talk about the earthquake hazards in Iceland, and our development of an early warning system, but as this is a symposium of experts on earthquakes and my main reason to visit Yemen is geothermal power – I shall mainly stay on the latter. I want to tell you what we have done, what we are doing, what you could do, the possibilities of geothermal in the world at large, and reflect on our latest technological development.

In short, we have frequent earthquakes in Iceland, albeit not very large ones. As you see from this slide, during the last ten years only a few exceeded magnitude 5 on the Richter scale.

 Because of this, and our well developed geophysical monitoring system, intensive international research has been done on earthquakes in Iceland during the last 20 years. This is under the auspices of the Icelandic government – but lately our work has aroused great excitment in the EU, so much so that today EU is a major financial contributor to the project.

Our worry of course is that Reykjavik, our capital, is placed on an active volanic zone. A lot of our volcanoes are also under the big glaciers, hence, great catastrophic glacial floods often precede in imminent eruption under the glaciers, and these may be even more dangerous than the eruption itself, or related earthquakes.

 Our aim has therefore been to develop a system, that can foresee what may happen on both a long and a short time scale, in order to be able to prepare a response to hazards before they occur, and while they are on-going, by real time observations, and by real time research.

We, as a responsible government, therefore greatly desire to be able to predict when a large earthquake occurs, what magnitude is to be expected, and be able to take the necessary precautions for our people.  

We have been quite successful.

At least in Iceland these microquakes are sometimes observed years in advance, and thus give an early indication to a potential earthquake-zone. A point of major importance is that these clusters of microquakes increase rapidly  1 – 3 weeks in advance. That is a major indication of a looming episode, and creates scope to prepare from weeks to days in advance. We managed, for example, to give a warning for the last big earthquake, in 2000, with almost 24 h in advance. This gives scope to undertake the  final civil preparations in the last hours, or even minutes. When Mount Hekla erupted last time, the same year, a warning was issued almost an hour before which enabled the authorities to close roads, divert traffic and warn the local people.

This system is by many experts considered to be the most precise, at least with conditions like the Icelandic ones. That is the reason why EU is funding its development. Recently, the government of China made an agreement with Iceland to develop a similar system, and the government of India, where similar earthquake pattern is shown under the Himalaya mountains, has also aquired Icelandic experts to develop such an early warning system.

I add, that Iceland already operates the United Nations Geothermal University, as well as the UNU Fisheries School, and it might be of interest for you to know that we are planning to start a new UNU school in Iceland on geohazards, teaching these techniques.

Distinguished audience,

The earthquakes of course relate to the bad side of being on the edge of the tectonical plates. However, as I told you in the beginning, there is also a bright side – that literally speaking has shun into the lifes of the Icelandic nation. By that I mean the geothermal power, that today produces increasing part of all our electricity.

Iceland is the land of the Sagas. We love to tell stories. Let me tell you our story with respect to sustainable green energy.

Iceland used to be the poor kid of Europe.

At the end of World War 2 Iceland was as dependent on imported energy, mostly oil, as any other western country. For centuries we thought that our only natural resources were the fishing stocks in the sea, but all the time we were literally walking on treasures in the underground and looking at them in the form of Geysers and waterfalls.

With determination and huge investments in technology we managed in the lifetime of only one generation to start using the Geysers, and the waterfalls, and change from being largely an oil-dependent economy to being able to meet about 80% of our energy needs by clean, green energy.

Today, virtually all electricity is produced from hydro and geothermal. We also use those resources – mostly the geothermal - to cover about 98% of our space heating requirements – quite a feat in an arctic country. Only about one quarter of the energy needs are met by imported energy, mostly in the form of oil and petrol, for the fishing fleet and the transport sector.

This was our road to wealth. Today we have dragged ourselves from poverty into having almost the highest income per capita in the world. Last year, for the first time we topped the UN Human Development Index, meaning that Iceland was according to the UN the best place to live in.

So, the rise of Iceland to become a wealthy nation is strongly linked to her  utilisation of hydro- and geothermal power. That´s our oil.

I can state with confidence that today the Icelanders the world´s leading experts in the use of geothermal energy. We truly are a geothermal nation. We possess not only state-of the art, but a breaking-edge technology on all fronts geothermal.

This is of great importance. What we can do, you can do – and other countries in a similar situation. In a world that needs energy, geothermal power really can make a difference.

In at least 140 countries geothermal energy is to be found in some form or other. On this world map you can see that we are only starting to use this resource.  Yemen has of course as you know much better than I do, a great potential in geothermal. It is a country like Iceland, with a lot of mountains, active volcanoes, and several sites of high-temperature geothermal potential. Of course, your population is much  greater than ours, but you, as every nation, needs cheap, dependable renewable energy.

Let me tell you another story, this time about your neighbour, Djibouti.

Like Iceland it has a great ring of fire underneath. The East African Rift Valley goes through the country, a rift that hosts many volcanoes and geothermal systems, and runs through Eritrea, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. In fact the Red Sea Rift is a continuation of the East African Rift. The current production of geothermal power in East Africa is only 150 MW. The potential, however, is estimated somwhere close to 14 000 MW.

The energy available to the Djiboutis is far too costly to be affordable. Cheap electricity, that makes the water run, the machines work, and lit the houses, is an absolute necessity if a country like Djibouti is to be able to eliminate poverty. Well, in Iceland we know how much it costs to produce geothermal electricity. We know that it is possible to do it at one-third of the present Djibouti prices, and still make a good return on investments.

The Icelandic company Reykjavík Energy Invest, who is with us today in Yemen, will soon be drilling for geothermal power in the Lach Assal Rift in Djibouti, and will later this week sign an agreement that hopefully will lead to 50 MW geothermal plant, enough for the whole of Djibouti, and in future perhaps another 100 MW. We would like to raise the interest of other nations, financial institutions, preferrably the private market to continue along the whole East African rift – and of course, if we have somebody to play with, into the Red Sea Rift as well.

But lets pause and look into the crystal ball of the future: What if we could increase the generation of electricity from each geothermal field four times compared to the present level? Well, we believe we can.

In Iceland we are presently beginning on new break-through technique that is based on the so-called "deep-drilling." Here you can see a schematic picture of the process.

The conventional method is to drill holes of 2-3 km depth into the ground, to extract steam to generate electricity, and in Iceland we then use the hot water as well for space heating. The deep-drilling entails going down to 4-5 kilometers depth, close to the magmatic intrusions, where scientists literally try to capture the energy in molten lava deep in the earths crust. The water at this depth is under a huge pressure at a very high temperature, and thus much more powerful. This enhances the yield in terms of power from each borehole 5-10 times as compared to the traditional boreholes, and the power from whole fields up to four times.

Clearly this opens up unique, new possibilities and may enable us to produce vastly greater amounts of power from existing fields than before. This is the future of geothermal power. This is a technique, that is preesently under development in Iceland, and if successful, could have dramatic results in at least some countries.

The potential in a country like Indonesia could be 120 000 MW instead of 30 000 MW and the potential in the African Rift Valley  40-50 000 MW instead of 14 000 MW. The potential in Yemen could be 4-5000 MW – and you could sell all your oil abroad for vital currency, and probably export electicity by cable as well to the Saudis. 

Ladies and gentleman

So, to conclude, the technology exists, a genuine break-through is being developed, the potential is vast, and the need for green, renewable energy is huge.

What we need is drive and vision, and optimism. Yemen has already taken great strides during the last few years, it is stirring up interest amont investors in the outer world, and from experience I know that despite the difficulties and the credit crunch in the financial markets, investors are cuing up to invest in green energy.

Well, you are sitting on a lot of it, and I hope you will be successfull in creating a lot of wealth – and certainly we in Iceland are ready and willing to share with you our experience.