Mepa Board (MB) chairman Vincent Cassar started proceedings by reading a letter from Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, pointing out that as the proposals under discussion were of national importance, no recourse to the Appeals Board was going to stop the work from starting once the MB had given its consent. No one suggested that an appeal, which would have to come from a registered objector – there were none except Flimkien ghall-Ambjent Ahjar (FAA) – would be ignored or stopped.    

Then Dr Robert Abela, legal counsel to Mepa informed the Board that that very morning he had replied to the protest presented in Court by Dr Anne Fenech, on behalf of Raymond and Gabrielle Bugeja, seeking a delay of decision until a full Maritime Impact Assessment (MIA) had been carried out. There were protests from Ryan Callus, the PN Board member: as the Board had not seen the original protest, Dr Abela could not read out the reply. The Chair ruled that the original protest and the reply would be read at the end of the “presentations”.  When they were, the Mepa reply was a scathing tirade on the insubstantial and pretentious nature of the protest but above all the lateness of its presentation. It seemed to pass by Dr Abela that he had waited until the morning of the meeting to deliver an answer and had not even given a copy to Board members: surely a deliberate course of action.

Loud assertions that Bugeja had no right to protest came from the audience, riding roughshod over the fact that the protest was made in the name of Bugeja and his wife and not in the name of the Fishing Coop. Much worse, someone at the front – very probably an official – said quite loudly and clearly that Bugeja was a swindler. “They” had run a check and found that Bugeja lived in Gozo! Jeers from the fishers of Marsaxlokk. The (PL) mayor of Zejtun, sitting next to me whispered: these idiots are lying in their teeth. Bugeja only votes in Gozo; he lives in Marsaxlokk. The Chair was silent on that point.

The debate was then thrown open to the floor. The Chair, in drawing up a list of speakers, pointed out that the only registered objectors (FAA) were not present; neither the PN nor Din l-Art Helwa (DLH) were registered as objectors. However, the Chair invited Hans Pasman, described in the press as a “consultant” to DLH, to speak. Before he could start, he was subjected to a pointlessly rude grilling by a Board member, mainly directed at making sure he was not just a “paid hireling”! Pasman spoke his piece, directed to showing the disastrous effects of ignition of an extensive gas cloud generated by a leak in the FSU. He was followed by Anne Fenech. Her main points were the lack of a comprehensive MIA, the huge discrepancy between the number of “piloted movements” assumed in the Transport Malta (TM) “preliminary” MIA and hers; the loophole left by George Papadakis in assuming that the area around the tanker and on-shore re-gas unit was ignition free. George Pullicino made much the same points, except for an unsubstantiated remark on the “very cheap” night electricity we could get from the Sicily IC.

Harbour Master David Bugeja defended the partial MIA made by TM as adequate to provide a high probability that there will be no unpleasant surprises when the full MIA is completed. He did not address the alleged “piloted movements” discrepancy however, strengthening the impression that speed was more important than completeness. And, with hindsight, is the suddenly-announced new breakwater on the Delimara side – not going to have any influence on ship movements and wave patterns? Was Captain Bugeja, on the Monday, quite unaware of the breakwater decision made public on the following Wednesday?

Then George Papadakis spoke up. I thought he acquitted himself rather well in the face of the Pasman thesis and other objections. Papadakis claimed that his “ignition-free zone” was a conservative assumption, its implication being that it provided maximum probability for the cloud to spread and therefore to be at its most dangerous. In a way he was taking the same line as Pasman but on a more restricted scale and with less apocalyptic predictions. Papadakis said quite clearly that he did not think the cloud from a tanker leak drifting into the bay would go past the power station without finding an ignition source. “On Pasman’s picture,” he said with slight sarcasm, “the cloud could reach Valletta and ignite there.” The “supporters” of Pasman were floored but they had no very good reason to be. If an uncontrolled LNG leak did occur under the right conditions of wind, its ignition could still have strong impact on the power station. Papadakis did not include all the station in his “ignition-source free zone”. 

Ryan Callus had a number of good questions, their effects somewhat marred by many less good ones. Callus asked about local electricity demand: day peak up to 400MW; night minimum 160MW said Enemalta. Then what would you be doing at night with the extra power from the 215MW CCGT ? Back came what can only be described as an inept answer: “we are not contracted to take all the output from the CCGT.” “Correct” answer: the CCGT has three (3) gas turbines and one (1) steam turbine, each of 55MW. For a 160MW demand one gas turbine can be switched off, without overall loss of efficiency. The BWSC can have all the eight engines switched off. A far more intelligent (and dangerous) question would have been: what is the IC doing at this time? Would “Sicily” be happy to switch it off? Would we be happy to switch it off when we may be getting electricity at very low (?) night rates? This I believe would have been the most telling way to question the form and size of the “new” PS.

Then it was the turn of the “tanks”. Why had the on-shore 60,000m3 tanks metamorphosed into ship-borne ones of 180,000m3 and then shrunk back to 128,000m3?

The Enemalta engineers stuttered and stammered but provided no clear answers, when their own calculations had provided some. Paul Gauci came to their “rescue” by insisting that the EIA group he was leading had only been asked to consider 128,000m3 tanks. Paul Gauci made another point later on, with a “correction” to the much touted figure of 91% of the residents preferring the FSU to be moored outside the harbour. When rebuked by Ryan Callus for leaving the correction till the last few minutes before the vote, Gauci replied that on principle his team never replied to statements quoted in the press. In fact, the “91%” business had certainly formed the subject of an acrimonious exchange between Minister Konrad Mizzi and PN whip David Agius in the parliamentary debate. Neither of the two seemed to have supported the Gauci “explanation”.

Someone complained that the FSRU option had not been considered. An Enemalta engineer, referring to the (tepid) response of a UK consultant when the suggestion was first made, claimed that that was incorrect. And followed that up with the assertion (later shamefacedly corrected) that a FSRU was comparatively new technology of which there was only one working example: the Toscana off Livorno! Somebody else insisted that a FSRU had been among the proposals submitted. An official (Enemalta engineer?) swore this was not true. No one mentioned The Malta Independent contact with a US firm called Endevour, which had refused to confirm a FSRU offer however.

Then up stood Capt. David Bugeja to warn against (unspecified) nautical and navigational difficulties of a FSRU. He was supported by a lone Marsaxlokk fisherman who said that large areas of Hurd Bank were already out of bounds to small fishermen; he would not tolerate any more. No one had mentioned Hurd Bank as an FSRU site up to that point. 

The vote on the Ryan Callus-Alex Vella motion to delay decision went 10-2 against. The final vote was 10-2 for granting of the necessary permits. Direct photography of board members actually voting was prohibited.