Electrogas has turned its first multi-million profit since it first started supplying gas and electricity to Enemalta.
Its 2021 accounts, published last month, show the consortium made a profit of €19.1 million, compared to a €56 million loss in 2020. Prior to that, it had incurred losses of €15 million in 2019, €32 million in 2018 and €23 million in 2017.
Company directors said in their annual report that, given the most recent financial projections, Electrogas’s financial performance and operating cash flow in subsequent years is expected to improve.
Electrogas bought €136 million worth of gas from its shareholder, Socar, Azerbaijan’s state-owned energy company in 2021. A five-year deal that saw Electrogas supply gas to Enemalta at a fixed price ended last year.
The company acknowledged that its exposure to variable market prices is offset by cash received from sales to Enemalta. Costs for these gas purchases are passed on to the state-owned energy provider.
The government’s deal with Electrogas is being scrutinised by parliament’s public spending watchdog. Former Electrogas director, Yorgen Fenech was summoned to testify by the parliamentary committee last week. His testimony was, however, postponed due to the pending criminal charges over his alleged role in journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia’s assassination.
Caruana Galizia was killed by a bomb placed under her car in October 2017. Fenech denies any involvement in the plot, though investigators have identified the Electrogas project as a potential motive for the murder.
The former Electrogas director owned an offshore company that planned to funnel large payments to Panama companies owned by former government officials Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri, according to a leaked e-mail.
Mizzi and Schembri deny wrongdoing. They were both banned from travelling to the US in December 2021 due to suspicions of corruption in the power station deal.
Former director Paul Apap Bologna resigned from the Electrogas board in 2021 after Times of Malta exposed his ownership of a similar company to Fenech’s.
A magisterial inquiry into Fenech’s company 17 Black is still ongoing.