In 1996 both Italy and Libya objected to a gas pipeline for Malta and instead advocated gas storage, Opposition Whip Joe Mizzi said in a heated question-time debate with Finance Minister Tonio Fenech on alternatives for a power station extension burning heavy fuel oil.
It all started with a rehash of last Wednesday’s PQ in which Mr Fenech had said that annual lubrication costs for the new Delimara power station extension would rise from €14,000 to some €1.5 million. In a supplementary question Mr Mizzi asked the minister if he thought it was right that after the extensive costs to have the extension burning heavy fuel oil, more huge capital outlays would have to be made to get the power station to burn gas.
Mr Fenech said the only viable way would have been to have a huge gas terminal, the ramifications of which were far outweighed by environmental considerations. Even the cost of a pipeline would have far outweighed the benefits. Having said that, the call for tenders for the construction of the new extension’s equipment had been kept technologically neutral, even though gas was impossible at the time and still was.
In any case, anything the government could have decided to do would have been economically unfeasible without EU funding on regional basis.
Mr Mizzi recalled that when Enemalta Corporation had laid out the national generation plan, gas had not been an option but the only way forward. The decision to turn to heavy fuel oil had been simply a fallback option.
During the 1996-98 Labour government Japanese experts had visited Malta and strongly suggested the construction of a facility on Hurd’s Bank to store six month’s supply of gas in rubber tanks, which would have been both cheaper and environmentally acceptable. Mr Mizzi asked who would be held accountable for the much greater costs now being incurred for the power station extension.
Mr Fenech retorted that he personally had no information on the Japanese proposal, and pointedly challenged Mr Mizzi to publish the files he held.It was true the power station extension project was some 18 months behind schedule, mainly thanks to the stumbling blocks that the opposition had thrown down. But when completed the extension would be in line with all EU emission limits.
The call for expressions of interest in gas-powered equipment had been made at the same time as the extension was being considered. The provision of gas would have required international agreements which would not have been without risks, as Europe’s gas supply problems had shown.Malta would have been in a dire situation right now even if it were to depend on gas supplies from Libya. There was no single energy option without inherent problems. Malta could not work without security of supply, which was why the interconnector for electricity made so much sense.
Malta was working with the concept of an energy mix, not dependent on any one supply. But one had to realise that alternative energy was much more costly than oil. Electricity with oil was being generated at 15c per unit, but the government would have to pay 25c per unit in feed-in tariffs to investors in photovoltaic technology. It was only for environmental obligations that the government was accepting the costs of alternative energy.
If the power-station extension had not been behind schedule, Malta would already be saving costs on the generation of electricity.
The Delimara extension would be 48 per cent efficient, as against Marsa’s 23 per cent.