In a week where safety concerns about the Labour Party’s plans to place an LNG terminal next to a power station have been raised, the owners of Europe’s largest terminal have launched consultations over plans to build a power station on site. But the power plant will take between three to four years to build while the terminal took six years – much longer than the two years being proposed by the Labour Party.
The terminal in question is the South Hook LNG terminal in Milford Haven, Wales, and includes five gas storage tanks with a diameter of 94m. It is owned by a joint venture between Qatar Petroleum, ExxonMobil and Total, and feeds gas to the UK’s national gas network.
This week, the owners have launched a series of consultation events over plans to build a 500MW power plant on site, right next to the storage tanks. Construction is expected to start next year, and the plant is set to be operational by late 2016 or 2017.
The placing of an LNG terminal next to a power station has been a source of controversy in Malta, since it forms part of Labour’s plans to cut down on energy bills. The Nationalist Party has raised safety concerns about the plans, particularly Finance Minister Tonio Fenech, who pointed out that the tanks would raise the risk of an explosion that would take out the power station.
The five tanks at the South Hook terminal are larger than the ones proposed, but they will be constructed further away from inhabited areas than the Delimara power station is.
The comparison between the two projects also does not hold for a number of other safety concerns, including the stability of the site proposed and issues concerning the unloading of LNG.
A campaign group set up in Milford Haven, Safe Haven, has been raising safety concerns about the neighbouring terminal since its inception, and last year, the European Commission issued a formal notice over a failure to comply with requirements to assess risks and make the findings public. The European Court of Human Rights, however, found that the construction of the terminals did not breach local residents’ human rights over the same matter.