After years of huge losses, Enemalta is expected to report a pre-tax profit of €40 million for 2016, according to chairman Fredrick Azzopardi.
In an interview in today’s The Sunday Times of Malta, he declined to comment on Enemalta’s obligations to Electrogas and the Shanghai Electric’s Delimara 3 plant, saying that one should not look at it as his hands being tied but rather that Malta was tied in to a stable and secure supply of electricity.
Enemalta is paying a fixed fee for power it buys from the BWSC plant (Delimara 3), 90 per cent owned by Shanghai Electric. It has also entered into an 18-year agreement with Electrogas to be supplied with electricity and natural gas from the LNG facility in Delimara.
With the Marsa power station now completely decommissioned, he admitted that in the case of an emergency, the heavy fuel oil back-up engines at Delimara would take considerably longer to fire up: up to a day or more.
However, he played down the possibility of this being needed as there was now a third source of energy.
He also confirmed that Electrogas would be paying “much more than €10 million” as a penalty for late delivery of its power station and that it would be either “paid or set off”.