Greece promises tax cut to attract oil and gas majors

* Greece plans to cut tax for oil/gas firms to 25 pct from40 pct

* Wants them to help exploit offshore hydrocarbon resources

* Announces tender of first oil exploration licences

LONDON, July 1 (Reuters) - Greece is planning to cut taxrates for oil and gas companies as it wants to attract them tohelp exploit its untapped offshore hydrocarbon resources, itsenergy minister said on Tuesday.

Under the plan, oil and gas explorers will pay 25 percenttax, down from 40 percent currently, and 5 percent of the taxwill go to local communities.

"We have done this in order to incentivise our investors toinvest in the future of Greece," Ioannis Maniatis, Greece'sEnergy Minister, said at a conference in London. He did not saywhen the new tax rates would come into effect.

Debt-laden Greece, which spent 15.6 billion euros ($21.2billion) to import fuel last year, or about 8.6 percent of itsgross domestic product, has launched an ambitious programme todiscover big hydrocarbon reserves. It has been inspired by largegas finds offshore from nearby Israel and Cyprus.

Maniatis also announced the tender of Greece's firstlarge-scale oil and gas exploration licenses after severalfruitless attempts over the past decades to make big oildiscoveries.

A group of Greek government oil and gas experts was meetingrepresentatives from BP, Shell, Total and ExxonMobil and other oil companies in London onTuesday and Wednesday, a Greek government source said.

Once the tender is officially published in the coming weeks,oil and gas producers will be able to bid for licences covering20 blocks located south of Crete and in the Ionian Sea.

"We will evaluate all the available data regarding the 20offshore blocks which will be included in Greece's newconcession round," said Mathios Rigas, chief executive ofEnergean Oil & Gas, currently Greece's sole oil producer. (Reporting by Karolin Schaps; Editing by Susan Fenton)