MEPs from the Green political grouping have again warned against the EU backing plans for a gas pipeline that critics argue will financially benefit murder suspect Yorgen Fenech.

In a draft motion for a resolution before the European Parliament’s energy committee, the MEPs argued that power station company Electrogas will receive €85 million in “compensation” if the pipeline is built.

Electrogas currently supplies LNG for the island’s power grid via a floating storage unit moored in Delimara.

The Greens emphasised how Fenech, an Electrogas shareholder, has been charged with complicity in journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia’s murder.

He denies the charges.

The resolution further detailed how Caruana Galizia was investigating a large cache of Electrogas documents before her assassination in October 2017.

Greens said “when and if” the Melita TransGas is commissioned, Malta will be locked into a dirty fossil fuel future for decades to come.

Last year, NGO Friends of the Earth joined calls for the government to scrap the pipeline plans, and instead focus on renewable energies.

In their recommendations, the FOE said that plans for the pipeline should be suspended and the roughly €400 million in taxpayer money should instead be invested in the production of renewable energy to speed up the country’s green transition.

“The proposed Melita TransGas pipeline would lock Malta in a fossil fuel future and signify a climate-incompatible investment, leading to stranded assets,” they said.

The construction of the pipeline would also have an impact on the posidonia beds around Delimara.

The seagrass, they said, is capable of capturing up to 15 times the amount of carbon dioxide that a rainforest is capable of and that this should be protected as a carbon sink, rather than be destroyed by the infrastructure required for the pipeline.

The government has argued that the pipeline will be “hydrogen-ready,” and is essential for diversifying Malta’s energy mix.