A forced outage of the Electrogas plant due to Storm Helios has reignited questions as to why Enemalta opted for a floating storage tanker to feed LNG to the new power plant.
The tanker had to be disconnected from its jetty for safety reasons due to the storm, leaving Electrogas unable to supply power to the national grid for several days.
Electrogas spends millions on chartering and operating the unit, which can hold around one to two months worth of LNG supply on board before requiring refuelling by another tanker.
The unit was fitted with a specially designed storm mooring system, allowing it to be disconnected from the jetty when bad storms strike.
So, was a floating storage unit the best option?
A 500-page probe by a spending watchdog into the Electrogas deal struggled to get satisfactory answers from Enemalta on that front.
Enemalta initially said the option of a permanent LNG terminal onshore was eliminated “after a number of studies”.
When the auditor general delved further, Enemalta clarified that the decision to opt for a floating storage unit was made on the basis of submissions by the various interested bidders.
The auditor general called Enemalta’s attempts to pass off bids as “studies” as being “incongruent”.
Enemalta further claimed that the bids received all made reference to an offshore LNG storage solution, rather than an onshore one.
This too was shot down by the auditor general who noted that the bids received from the companies Endeavor, Yildirim, Energy World and Med-Gas all proposed onshore systems.
The audit report said Enemalta’s attempts to justify resorting to the offshore solution were “factually incorrect”.
The time factor
Time may have been a factor in Enemalta preferring the offshore solution. The power station was built against a backdrop of a pledge by then prime minister Joseph Muscat and energy minister Konrad Mizzi to deliver the project within 18 months.
“Enemalta maintained that the completion of the proposed solution in two years was more realistically achievable through an offshore solution until a more permanent alternative would be developed,” the auditor general’s report says.
Minutes from a technical committee overseeing the power station process say “technical specialists” viewed an onshore solution as being the better one, “however, the tight timelines almost certainly exclude this option”.
The auditor general further noted how the energy ministry provided a “different” explanation from the one given by Enemalta about why an offshore solution was the best option.
The ministry said this option would have the least environmental impact and could be more easily removed once a gas pipeline was built.
Mario Pullicino, the local agent for the offshore tanker used by Electrogas, features in a police investigation into potential corruption by Mizzi and ex-OPM chief of staff Keith Schembri, in connection with their once-secret Panama companies.
Pullicino was found to have engaged in potentially suspicious transactions with 17 Black, owned by former Electrogas director Yorgen Fenech.
17 Black was, in turn, mentioned as one of the main sources of income for the Panama companies, in an e-mail authored by Nexia BT director Karl Cini.
Cini is refusing to answer questions in a public accounts committee hearing into the Electrogas deal.
According to Cini’s lawyer, the Nexia BT director has been formally identified as a suspect in an ongoing magisterial inquiry.