There is a nagging suspicion that there is more to the whole Freeport expansion controversy than meets the eye. 

In fact, the Prime Minister’s recent insistence that the Freeport should not be allowed to expand further inland may very well have had less to do with concern for the residents of Birzebbuga and more to do with attempting to pre-emptively mitigate against the effect of the mammoth LNG tanker that is to be parked a figurative stone’s throw away from their homes in the coming weeks.

When the Prime Minister came up with the announcement last week that he was against the further land-based expansion of the Freeport, he raised more than a few eyebrows.  Some environmental NGOs applauded the statement, while the Opposition took exception to what it viewed as a move that could damage the Maltese economy.

There is, however, something that does not quite add up. What Birzebbuga residents have always been against is the expansion of the Freeport into the bay itself, into the town’s swimming area and the latest permit bringing the smokestacks of some of the world’s largest container ships outside their bedroom windows.

The issue has never been about where the Freeport expands behind the complex. Yes, the operations of the Freeport have a considerable impact on the residents of Birzebbuga, but that impact comes mainly from shore-side operations, which cause considerable noise and light pollution to the entire town.

As far as we are aware, there has never been an issue with the Freeport’s expansion at the back of the facility, into land that the Prime Minister points out as being Outside Development Zone land but which appears to be mostly derelict land in an area that is not exactly comparable to that at Zonqor Point, a site that has become synonymous with ODZ as far as most people are concerned.

In having strangely declared himself against this type of Freeport expansion, the Prime Minister appears to have merely been seeking brownie points with a population that is about to experience the somewhat grim reality of having an enormous tanker filled to the brim with LNG berthed very close to their homes. 

But this morsel thrown to the masses will certainly not be enough to stave off the inevitable reaction from the nearby residents of Birzebbuga and Marsaxlokk, both traditional Labour Party strongholds, once the LNG tanker is finally delivered from Singapore to Marsaxlokk.

The problem is not only aesthetic, which it surely is on one level, but it is also one of safety. And the prospect of hosting such a monstrosity is one that the area’s residents will not completely digest until it is permanently set in place at some point this autumn.

At that point many of the still unanswered safety questions will begin to be asked again.

It was also clear from the outset that the so-called floating storage unit option for the new power station’s LNG supply would have been controversial, and that it could have ended up losing the Labour Party votes in the last election, and possibly in the next.

In fact, this newsroom recently revealed that although during the 2013 election campaign the Labour Party had insisted it was opting for a land-based LNG storage solution, its plan all along was to go for the less-attractive FSU option.

This newspaper had shown how the land-based storage of LNG to fuel the new Delimara power station would have cost anywhere between US$500 million and US$1 billion, as opposed to a price tag of between US$50 million and US$250 million for the FSU option, a price tag in sync with the government cost estimates.

According to documentation from the former power station project’s lead developer Gasol dating back to 2012, at the time that the Labour Party was actually piecing together its grand energy plan, the land-based storage option the Labour Party had sold to the electorate would have taken four to five years to construct, as opposed to the one of two years for an FSU – in line with the party’s own two-year deadline, which was hopelessly missed all the same.

As such, it should have been clear from the beginning that the FSU option was the only option being considered by the government. And although that much is clear with hindsight, and thanks to documentation evidencing that which was uncovered by this newsroom, it is now amply evident that even the FSU option has thrown the project’s timings out of whack, let alone the four to five year estimate for a land-based facility.

The public was, in fact, only informed of the FSU option at the beginning of 2014 – a year into the project and a little over a year before the first deadline. And, given the public outcry over the prospect of that permanently berthed floating LNG tanker being placed in Marsaxlokk Bay, it is understandable that the government had not wanted to advertise it, had pretended it was going for the land-based option, and had only announced it when it was absolutely constrained to do so. 

And now that the FSU’s delivery is allegedly approaching, the government is already trying to mitigate the dubious welcome it will receive from nearby residents with its supposedly environmentally-friendly Freeport statements.

But if the government is truly looking to quell some of the concerns of nearby residents, it would do well to use the time it has left to carry out proper risk assessments on the potentially dangerous project, assessments that have been sorely lacking for a project of such magnitude.

Such risk assessments will also have to ensure that the project falls in line with The EU’s Seveso II rules on the control of major accident hazards involving dangerous substances. Very little along such lines, however, appears to have been done so far and the residents of the greater Marsaxlokk Bay area are still acutely concerned about the LNG tanker prospect.

Much of the hysteria that had taken hold when the LNG tanker had first been announced has faded away, but it will certainly resurface this autumn once the tanker is finally delivered to the new power station. But, by then, the time for protestations will have expired. 

The government has thrown its own deadlines out the window but, even more concerning, it has thrown residents’ fears for their own safety out the window and attempted to placate them with statements about the Freeport which, truth be told, do not concern them all that much.