Is the government taking the people for a ride over its energy plans, as the Nationalist Party has claimed?

Maybe it is a bit too early to say, but what is certain is that, contrary to all the ministerial declarations that the project is right on track, it has not only been derailed but it appears there are some serious flaws.

It is about time the government lays all its cards on the table for the people to know exactly what it is doing on its behalf.

If there is one thing where this government is failing miserably, it is in transparency and accountability.

The government is only being transparent and accountable either when it is to its benefit or when it is pressed to do so by the media.

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat says the power station project has been delayed for just a couple of months, not years. That has yet to be seen, since the public can hardly be blamed now if they only start to believe in the plans when they begin to take shape.

There are so many points that need to be clarified, so many questions to be asked, that Parliament may need more than one sitting to debate the issue. Dr Muscat has been reported saying the delay in the building of the power station was a result of protracted talks between the consortium that was to build the gas-fired plant and Shanghai Electric Power, the company which, the government says, is prepared to invest €320 million in Enemalta.

According to the prime minister, the talks were over technical issues linked to the conversion to gas of the BWSC power station.

However, it has now emerged that the real cause of the delay is apparently China’s insistence that the corporation buys the electricity produced from the BWSC plant when this is converted to gas.

However, the government had been against committing itself to this and the Opposition is insisting the country should not bind itself to it.

The government had already bound itself to buy energy from Electrogas, the private consortium planning to set up the gas-fired power station.

Why has the government found itself in this muddle? Had it not gone into the nitty gritty of the deal before committing itself?

But this is only part of the story. If its plans have been derailed, even just for a couple of months, how is it going to finance the tariff reductions for industry?

Again, last Sunday Dr Muscat was quoted saying that the tariff reductions were “possible, irrespective of the power station’s completion date”. This is not what he said he had planned to do before taking power.

Two months before the 2013 general elections, Konrad Mizzi explained that, if elected, the government would be able to bring down the energy tariffs through a new energy production mix.

He had argued that, with the planned building of a new gas-fired plant, the conversion of the BWSC to gas, together with the interconnector, production costs would be cut substantially.

The money to finance the tariff cuts is now likely to come from a government-to-government deal done with Enemalta over the sale of the corporation’s petroleum division. Once again, that deal has been kept under wraps.

This sounds very much like a robbing-Peter-to-pay-Paul affair.

The time is indeed well overdue for the government to unravel the puzzle. It was, after all, Dr Muscat who put the energy sector and the hefty bills at the forefront of his electoral campaign.

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