Prime Minister Joseph Muscat would not commit that the gas power station will be completed by the March 2015 deadline, but insisted that energy tariffs for industry will still be reduced in six months' time.
Asked directly by The Malta Independent whether the power station will be completed in six months, Dr Muscat insisted that the energy tariffs will be decreased by then but said the government's energy plan - which has been "concluded" - does not "exclusively depend" on the power station's completion by the deadline.
Asked whether this was an admission that the project will not be completed by March 2015, Dr Muscat insisted that it was not an admission but rather confirmation that energy tariffs will be reduced in six months.
Almost three weeks ago, The Malta Independent on Sunday visited the Delimara site by boat and reported that no works were being carried out. A week later, it quoted one of the ElectroGas partners - Siemens - as saying that is still to invest to further support the project, along with the other consortium partners. In the meantime, a Siemens brochure on Combined Cycle Gas Terminals, CCGTs, says that the plants can be manufactured in "as little as" 20- to 24 months.
Earlier this week, The Malta Independent visited the site again and noticed that some "preparatory" works had started. On top of a huge mound of earth diggers were removing soil and loading it into trucks, which were then dumping their loads over the sites. According to the project plans, the works are being carried out at the site where the regasification unit will be constructed. The regasification unit will serve to turn liquefied natural gas back into gas form, which will then be fed into three gas-fired turbines.
For now, there is no sight of the actual turbines and the land on which they will be constructed remains untouched. The same goes for the outer part of the power station, where a jetty leading to the Floating Storage Unit - the 285 metre-long gas tanker that will be used as a storage tank - will be laid on the seabed.
Another part of the project includes the construction of a steam turbine, which will be located near the BWSC plant. This area also remains untouched.
As for the FSU, the latest news came out back in October, when it was announced that the ship had sailed into the Spanish port of Ferrol for conversion works to begin. According to industry websites, the conversion of LNG tankers into storage units can take up to 18 months. Sources insisted that, despite the preparatory works, the deadline is, at this point, very hard to reach.
The Malta Independent has been consistently reporting on the power station situation and the governement has been consistently failing to answer any of our questions. This paper contacted the Energy Ministry twice in the past couple of weeks but none of our questions were answered. Questions were also sent to Gasol and SOCAR, who along with Siemens and GEM Holdings make up the ElectroGas consortium. Those questions also remain unanswered.
This paper also photographed two PR officials at the site of the works being carried out in Delimara this week - one from the Energy Ministry and the other from Enemalta. Neither could be reached for comment.
Despite what is now just short of confirmation that the power station will not be completed by March 2015, Energy Minister Konrad Mizzi told The Times in July that the project was "on track." Michael Kunz, a project coordinator from Gasol, also insisted that the timeline set by the government would be met.
The Prime Minister said yesterday that the reduction of energy tariffs, and indeed Labour's energy plan do not rely exclusively on the completion of the power station by the March deadline. But the Labour Party had always explained that the gas-fired power station project was central to the energy plan that would lead to a reduction in energy bills. Mr Mizzi had explained in October last year that energy bills for households could be decreased a full year earlier than the completion of the power station because Enemalta sold off a holding company for €30 million. The rest would be up to lower generation costs as a result of the new power station. Dr Muscat yesterday did not explain how energy tariffs for industry can be reduced and those for households sustained if the power station is not operational by March.
The PL had also claimed during the election campaign that the new power station would be completed within two years of a labour victory. When the call for an expression of interest was issued on 11 April 2013, Konrad Mizzi, then Minister for Energy, told journalists that the power station would be up and running by March 2015. When asked at the time if he would resign if the deadline was not met, he had evaded the question and insisted that he did not envisage such a scenario. He had also insisted that the government, "in line with best practice programmes, had contingency plans."