An article in today’s issue highlights the fact that the government is more than likely bound to miss its umpteenth deadline for the commissioning of the Delimara power station. 

And while this is obviously a politically-sensitive issue, given that having the power plant up and running by March 2015 had been the Labour Party’s cornerstone electoral pledge, there is far more at stake here.

The people were promised that such a tight two-year deadline was wholly ‘doable’, when it very clearly was anything but.  They were also promised a land-based storage and regasification facility when all along the government knew full well, as has been exposed by this newsroom, that the floating LNG tanker option only viable option for the new power station.  Anything else that the government was pledging was, it now transpires, clearly undoable.

In fact, this newsroom some months back revealed how it should have been clear from the beginning that the FSU option was the only option being considered by the government.

But the public was, in fact, only informed of the FSU option - as opposed to what would have been the more palatable option of a land-based storage facility - at the beginning of 2014, a year into the project and a little over a year before that 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 only announced it when it was absolutely constrained to do so.

Nowadays, anyone visiting the greater Marsaxlokk Bay area at night over recent weeks will have been greeted by a somewhat alien sight that puts the project into perspective.  The jetty constructed to host the FSU appears to have been all but completed, as clearly evidenced by its enormous reach into the bay, which is amplified at night by what must be hundreds of lights – demonstrating the sheer enormity of this part of the project.

And while this abhorrent view is bad enough, it will deteriorate further once the giant tanker is in place – a development that will in all likelihood block the views of the Delimara cliffs from at least Birzebbuga.

Deadlines and aesthetics aside, the safety issues associated with the tanker are of even more paramount importance.

It was recently reported in the media how the plant’s operators and the authorities are keeping the contents of a study analysing the risks associated with the LNG tanker under wraps and under lock and key, lest the public’s prying eyes catch even a glimpse of it.

This is unacceptable on so many levels.

Such risk assessments will 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, has been done so far and the residents of the greater Marsaxlokk Bay area are still acutely concerned over the LNG tanker prospect.

Much of the hysteria that had taken hold back when the LNG tanker had first been announced has faded away, but it will certainly resurface in the near future once the tanker is finally delivered to the new power station.  But, by then, the time for protestations will have expired.  The government has already showed that it cares not for residents’ concerns, as evidenced by the fact that the risk assessments are a virtual state (and corporate) secret. 

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 as well for the sake of getting this ‘doable’ project done.