This newsroom reported yesterday that the prices of natural gas have plummeted in Europe while Malta will keep paying higher prices (no) thanks to the controversial deal this government had signed with Electrogas.

In fact, according to the latest figures, it seems that we are paying double for gas for the power station than most of our European counterparts.

This is virtually the same formula the government has used to purchase petrol and diesel. It has argued time and time again that long-term hedging keeps the market prices stable. If prices go up, ours will remain the same for a number of months. The problem is that, if the prices elsewhere go down, we will be bound to keep paying the higher prices that would have been negotiated previously.

The Socar deal has always been mired in controversy. The government had bound itself with Socar - one of the main players in the Electrogas consortium - to buy fuel from them for a number of years, at a fixed price.

The Daphne Project last year revealed that for the first five years of the 10-year contract with Socar, which was signed in 2015, Malta had committed to a fixed price of €9.40 ($11.50) per mmbtu, a unit of gas. 

Current gas prices in the European Union stand at around $5.15 per mmbtu, which is 37.69% less than the price of a year ago.

This means that, while the rest of Europe is benefitting from cheaper gas prices, which came as a result of greater imports, we cannot do the same.

But gas prices are not the only issue the country is experiencing, with regard to energy. The ongoing power cuts have become the talk of the town. On Sunday evening, most of the country experienced another blackout. The power was back on in a relatively short time and this would not have been much of an issue had it been an isolated case. But it was anything but isolated. No immediate explanation was given for Sunday's power outage, and the people are demanding answers.

There have been several power cuts over the past couple of weeks, some of which went on for hours. One of the power cuts was nationwide two days before Christmas. The latest one happened just yesterday. Enemalta and the government have blamed the interconnector in the past, saying that bad weather in Sicily affected the provision of electricity coming from the undersea cables. But blaming the interconnector time and time again has only served to prove that the country is relying heavily on a project that had been criticized by this same administration when it was in Opposition.

The fact of the matter is that Malta is currently experiencing third-world country problems when it comes to energy production. We have been told that the interconnector is the best possible option, and also that the country needs an energy 'mix,' but the situation is one where power is going out on an almost daily basis and we do not really know why this keeps happening.

The fact that these power interruptions are happening around Christmastime surely does not help, especially those businesses who have already suffered a lot as a result of the ongoing political crisis.

The government, Enemalta and Electrogas need to sort out this mess at once. We, the taxpayers, have forked out hundreds of millions of euro on the promise of an effective and cheap energy generation and distribution system, but it seems we have been shortchanged.