For several years the ways and means by which the country purchases and imports its all-important oil to run its power stations on have been somewhat more than opaque.  But now with more and more information coming to light through the media, police investigations, a report by the Auditor General and a high profile court case, more and more questions are now being asked.

With scandal allegations related to the country’s oil procurement processes having dominated much of the last general election campaign, many have perhaps been too concerned with the political fallout of the allegations and over who had gained from past arrangements to properly question who, exactly, lost out.

If the allegations are proved right, there are middlemen in the process who earned considerable sums out of those arrangements.  But, at the end of the day, it was not only the government coffers that lost out, but, rather, it was the consumers themselves who perhaps lost out over the years by having to foot what could have been higher than necessary electricity bills.

Malta has one of the highest electricity rates in the whole of Europe, which to a certain extent stands to reason given the fact that the country - bereft as it is of natural fuel resources and with renewable energy in a perpetual state of infancy - is entirely dependent on the importation of fuel to run its power stations. 

As a result, the country and its consumers are also completely at the mercy of the price at which the country is able to purchase its fuel.  Those prices are passed down to the consumer in the form of higher electricity rates – rates that have over the years catalysed national protests and which, it can be convincingly argued, even cost the Nationalist Party the last general election.

It was the Consumers Association that this week raised the very pertinent question of just how and to what extent the country’s consumers were affected by the hanky-panky that has apparently been plaguing the area of oil procurement for several years now.  And the association has, correctly, requested the Malta Resources Authority - which approves final consumer prices - and the Malta Competition and Consumer Affairs Authority - which ensures that correct commercial practices are observed and that competition laws are adhered to - to investigate the matter followed in the wake of a recent 400-page report by the Auditor General.

The association’s request is for the two authorities to investigate fuel procurement practices at Enemalta - in parallel to the new police investigations the energy minister recently asked the police to undertake and other practices which are currently the subject of court proceedings - so as to evaluate whether consumers had suffered as a result of ‘Enemalta’s behaviour’ and whether such behaviour had led to unnecessarily high prices.

Energy Minister Konrad Mizzi recently requested the police to investigate more irregularities in the Enemalta’s oil procurement process as underscored by the Auditor General.  The police are already investigating oil procurements that had taken place before 2008, and a court case in this vein is also underway. The new request for investigation would pertain to the years between 2008 and early 2011.

Since the ongoing police investigations into the oil procurement scandal and a related court case focuses on activities undertaken prior to 2008, Dr Mizzi had pointed out that the lack of transparency emphasised by the Auditor General in Enemalta Oil Procurement up to May 2011 ‘raises questions as to whether alleged wrongdoings in the process were perpetuated beyond 2008’.

As such, the ministry referred the matter to the Police Commissioner to determine whether the procurement process, as conducted between 2008 and May 2011 as covered by the Auditor General’s report, involved the commission of criminal offences.

Investigations and court proceedings aside, the Consumers Association has correctly highlighted how consumers are tangibly affected by each and every practice in the energy sector – from fuel procurement to wastages in the distribution system, and from Enemalta’s debt servicing requirements to staff levels – since it is the end consumer that foots the bills, which the association described as ‘exorbitant’ in recent years.

The association also described as ‘preoccupying’ the fact that since such actions as have been alleged are so detrimental to the consumer have surfaced, no authority whose duty it is to protect the consumer has neither expressed itself on the subject or that they intended investigating the issue as they are empowered to do.

It is high time that such an investigation is carried out so as to determine not only how the country’s coffers have been pillaged by rogue traders and middlemen, but the extent to which everyday consumers themselves have been potentially overcharged as a result of the wrongdoings.