Energy Minister Miriam Dalli on Wednesday played down the significance of an agreement signed between Azerbaijani state energy company SOCAR and the government through Konrad Mizzi, saying that it was an agreement to ensure that the country had a secure supply of energy which was never implemented.
Asked about the 2015 agreement, which was only revealed in the past few days after being obtained by the Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation through a Freedom of Information request, Dalli said that this was a “security of supply agreement which was terminated five years ago.”
Upon obtaining the agreement, the foundation said: “we have obtained a copy of the LNG Security of Supply Agreement that Konrad Mizzi had signed with SOCAR, an undisclosed state guarantee for Electrogas that Joseph Muscat’s government kept hidden from public view, including from banks and the European Commission.”
“It was an agreement which was done so that our country will have a guarantee of energy supply. That agreement was terminated, the projects were completed, and today we are working on other projects and will be announcing more so that we have a strong future in the energy sector,” Dalli added.
The agreement in question was signed in 2015 and terminated on 7 December 2017, with Dalli saying that it was never actually implemented.
Asked whether she felt that the deal was “strange”, Dalli said that any energy issue has to be seen from the perspecptive of securing energy provision for the country.
“One of the things we always speak of is security of supply: this was a security of supply agreement, it was terminated five years ago and never came into being,” she said.
She said that the government never wanted to be in a situation – and still doesn’t want to be in a situation – of having a lack of security of supply, adding that people are now more than ever understanding the importance of having security of supply given what is happening in other countries in Europe in the energy sector.
Dalli denied that she was “defending Konrad Mizzi” in her answers, saying that she was being asked about a security of supply agreement and was answering about that agreement.
Asked to whom the subsidies are going – whether it’s Electrogas, Socar, or Shanghai Electric, Dalli said that “the money is going to the people.”
“If it weren’t, the people would be experiencing energy bill increases like in other countries where bills have increased by four, five, or six times. Here, because of a conscious decision taken by the government to keep the energy bill prices stable money is going to our families and keeping them in a better situation than if we had to allow prices to go up as, after all, a PN government did in 2013,” she said.