The technical occurrences to which the Labour MP Joe Mizzi referred to in Parliament are things that occur normally throughout the lifetime of any electricity generation plant, Enemalta said this evening.

It said in a statement that these occurrences are more common during the initial year of operation as a result of teething problems. 

Yesterday, Mr Mizzi said that the diesel engines of the Delimara power station extension had a number of problems which had not yet been solved.

Enemalta said that the small leaks into the combustion chamber do not affect the operation of the engine and pose no risk of damage. Nonetheless, the Enemalta engineers together with BWSC decided to take action and minimise or eliminate these leaks.

Currently, all eight engines are operational and any remaining leaks are within the accepted levels. None of the leaks in the engine have anything to do with the kind of fuel used and these in fact happened on engines when using both fuel oil and diesel.

The corporation said that theissue with the dump condenser was currently being tackled and there was an agreement with BWSC to replace it with a new one. This was common practice when it came to the commissioning of a new plant.

Enemalta said that a fault with the deaerator had taken place in June and corrective measures were taken. The manufacturer had modified the original piece, corrected the fault and this had been reinstalled and was working fine. It was not second hand as had been alleged by Mr Mizzi.

The corporation said it was unfortunate that Mr Mizzi chose to report the information he received from site personnel without taking into account the larger picture.

For, the issues he mentioned, were relatively minor and a normal occurrence for such engines. Large diesel engines such as those used in the plant required ongoing routine maintenance but were flexible, efficient and durable.

Enemalta said it was also unfortunate that Mr Mizzi decided to give the wrong information about the nation’s security of supply.

"Last winter’s peak happened in February at 368MW. Presently Enemalta has 250MW capacity at Delimara plus 50MW which is currently unavailable due to maintenance, and 150MW available at Marsa.

"This total does not include the four boilers currently shut down but which can be put back in service to produce an additional 100MW.

"This means that, in total, and without the Delimara extension, Enemalta has a capacity of 500MW, which is even well above the summer peak of 429MW," the corporation said.