A three-day cold spell in December 2007 and a delayed shipment of gas because of bad weather left Enemalta with "only 90 minutes" of gas supplies, a dossier published by the government has revealed.

The internal Enemalta dossier, drawn up in March 2008, just two days before the general election, said the corporation had a low capacity of storage and this meant it was "not in a position to secure continuity of gas during peak periods arising from abnormal cold spells".

It also acknowledged that the privatisation of the gas division, which at the time was still ongoing, and the decision to relocate the facility away from Qajjenza made it difficult to "substantiate massive investment in building new storage tanks".

Along with other sections of the dossier, the revelation on Enemalta's precarious gas storage facilities was intentionally blacked out by the Investments Ministry before it published the report on its website on Wednesday.

In a statement accompanying the dossier on Wednesday, the ministry said that a number of sections were blacked out for reasons ranging from commercial to legal sensitivity.

However, it turned out that all the blacked out sections were still accessible by a simple cut and paste procedure.

The dossier was prepared by Enemalta's management to provide a new government with a comprehensive overview of the corporation outlining the state of play, the issues at stake and recommendations.

The government published the dossier after the Labour Party had started quoting sections of it, which the ministry claimed no knowledge of.

A passage struck out by the ministry highlighted the fact that Enemalta's Petroleum Division was in breach of EU obligations to control the release of fuel fumes (volatile organic compounds or VOCs) during the loading and unloading of road-tankers.

The directive dealing with the handling of gasoline had been transposed into Maltese law in 2001 but Enemalta was only partly observing the directive by having a vapour recovery unit installed at the plant, which was connected to the storage tanks. However, the road-tanker filling gantry was not connected to the unit because the infrastructure only allowed for top-loading of the trucks.

"The recovery of the vapours released from the loading of road-tankers can be carried out effectively only if these are bottom loaded. This requires the replacement of the control and loading equipment on the gantry and the replacement of the road-tanker fleet," the report said.

The corporation was also in breach of EU directives with the light heating oil it was importing because it had a sulphur content higher than 0.2 per cent.

In another blacked out section it transpires that the government's decision to cap the fuel surcharge at 50 per cent for the nine months between October 2007 and June 2008 cost €38 million.

The report's authors said the surcharge should have been 90 per cent in December and January rising to 98 per cent in February and March.

The government's decision at the time to cap the surcharge for nine whole months was widely believed to have been motivated by electoral considerations even though in December 2007 Minister Austin Gatt had said the government was able to foot 40 per cent of the surcharge because finances were on a sound footing.

Eventually, the surcharge shot up to 95 per cent in July before the new high tariffs were introduced in October.

In its conclusion, the report highlighted as a threat the "high degree of political interference in the internal day-to-day running of the corporation".

However, Dr Gatt was unfazed by the management's conclusion, insisting that Enemalta was not an entity independent from the government. "While this government consistently reduced its interference into the daily management functions, it would never reduce its interference in the formulation and implementation of policy," Dr Gatt said. If this were considered to be interference than the minister did not agree with the management, the statement added.

The report also provides scathing criticism of the work practices in the company, which contribute to an inflexible workforce and high over-time costs.

ksansone@timesofmalta.com