Malta’s gas pipeline proposal has ranked second in the European Commission’s scoreboard for projects intended to create an energy union, the Times of Malta has learnt.
The proposal is viewed by Brussels as “very important” for its aim to further diversify energy supplies and end the island’s gas isolation from the mainland, according to sources close to the Commission.
The gas pipeline, linking Malta to Gela in Sicily, is on the list of projects for North-South gas interconnections in the EU’s western region, the sources said.
The list is composed of projects of common interest to the EU and is reviewed every two years by the Commission.
The ranking follows progress made on the project over the last 18 months and is expected to be announced by the Commission later this month when it releases its first State of the Energy Union report.
Some of the bigger projects proposed by other member states have lost their status as projects of common interest, the sources told this newspaper.
Malta is expected to start generating electricity using gas next year but this will be shipped as liquefied natural gas and stored in a converted LNG carrier that will be berthed inside Marsaxlokk Bay. The floating storage facility has stoked controversy and the government has pledged to remove it when the gas pipeline is built.
The pipeline proposal is still on the drawing board but earlier this year Malta obtained an EU grant of €400,000 to conduct further studies. The Energy Ministry recently awarded a contract to Tractabel Engineering of Italy to carry out the studies to identify the optimal 1.2 km wide route corridor and terminal points in Gela and Delimara.
The company will also be expected to prepare the conceptual design of the infrastructure and the necessary documentation for the commencement of permit granting procedures in Malta and Italy. The studies are expected to take 18 months to complete.
The Malta-Sicily gas pipeline proposal had been included among a list of 248 key energy infrastructure projects and was given a boost in October last year when EU leaders agreed during a summit to pay “special attention” to the more remote and less well connected parts of the bloc such as Malta, Cyprus and Greece.
Projects selected as being of common interest will benefit from accelerated permitting procedures and improved regulatory conditions and may have access to financial support from the Connecting Europe Facility, under which a €5.4 billion budget has been allocated for the period 2014-2020.
kurt.sansone@timesofmalta.com