The proceedings of the Public Accounts Committee are being reduced to a farce mainly by the tactics of Minister Austin Gatt, reminiscent of a Russian katyusha barrage of WWII. While the public has little information from the PAC sittings – and that little has been subject to serious inaccuracies – Minister Gatt has been using public money to give us his edited version designed, without quite resorting to untruths, to emphasise what he wants to emphasise, even if that emphasis obscures the wider picture.

The central theme of this crusade is the absolute money advantage of the BWSC offer over the Bateman one and the corresponding iniquity of the parliamentary opposition in allegedly favouring Bateman.

So we get a veritable barrage of figures, generally plucked out of the air in the sense that the public does not know their source, intended to persuade us to join in a rousing chorus of approval.

The best illustration of this is Minister Gatt’s rebuttal of an Israeli newspaper contention that the Bateman offer was cheaper than that of BWSC – incidentally not an argument that surfaced in the PAC. Out roars the katyusha barrage: Bateman cost €290 million more than BWSC; as the whole BWSC equipment contract is worth €286 million that gives the impression that Bateman were completely off their rocker. There was no mention that this sum came from the (possibly unusual) request in the Enemalta tender that the applicants include the fuel cost for 10 years of running the generators. Ten years of “clean” diesel (Bateman) will certainly cost a lot more than HFO: a heavy fuel with enough sulphur to require de-sulphurisation under EU rules despite Minister Tonio Fenech’s attempted whitewash.

Reports also had Dr Gatt including an element of double accounting in the barrage. While the public was still reeling from the €290 million difference, he put out a further figure: the Bateman unit cost was 3c4 greater than the BWSC value; that would lead to €30 million a year more in generating costs or €300 million in 10 years. Of course, most of those were already included in the original €290 million.

But the report has the Auditor General saying a BWSC (HFO) unit cost 3c4 against a Bateman (gasoil) unit of 4c. This works out at €30 million over 10 years. But then, how does this square up with that €290 million BWSC-Bateman difference, all of which come from the total fuel costs for the 10-year period, and with a unit cost difference of 4.3c, both shown on p.30 of the NAO report?

This tender request for 10-year fuel costs raises some concern. It explodes all talk of chances of changing to natural gas by 2015-16.

Still worse in the short term, the proposal to power the Delimara extension by gasoil (diesel) rather than HFO, made by various sectors of civil society as well as by Dr Gatt’s parliamentary colleague, Franco Debono, is doomed to rejection.

Minister Fenech’s claim to putting back the choice of fuel – HFO or diesel – to a time “when the power station extension would be close to coming on stream” is at best a sham. For a start, as sensible people give up use of HFO, the diesel – HFO price difference can only increase; and, more obvious, choice of diesel would demolish, retrospectively of course, the best argument Dr Gatt could muster against Bateman.

Moreover, the most expensive part of the pollution abatement equipment – the desulphurisation plant – would become redundant. Minister Fenech has failed to produce any credible figures for the rise in average cost of a unit if diesel is used instead of HFO in the Delimara extension.

If he cannot do that, his only decent and responsible course of action is to opt for diesel now.