This came in as a comment, but I’m putting it up as a guest post because it is a perfect analysis of the situation.
Sent in by PF:
During the 80s the Labour government was regressive when it changed the Marsa Power Station to coal and in such a densely populated area.
The new Nationalist government had no choice but to make alternative arrangements and build another power station, closing down Marsa. The economy started to grow and to keep the momentum more power had to be generated.
The time has come again to increase the energy generation so a new power station had to be built.
The choice was between gas and oil, no coal again.
We couldn’t have a gas-fired power station because Malta did not and still does not have the delivery (building of gas tankers/ships) and storage options (vast gas tanks) because hugely expensive and the process takes years (the problem the Labour Party faces now).
So the obvious choice was heavy fuel oil while the process of sorting out EU funding for a gas pipeline from Sicily went through, followed by more years for laying it down and building the infrastructure. The estimated time for the gas pipeline project is five years.
At the same time, the Nationalist goverment managed to obtain funds for the interconnector to produce cheaper and cleaner energy. The interconnector will come on stream next year. The Labour Party has ignored this. Quite clearly, somebody has sold it a power station and somebody else is taking a cut, and several people are personally invested in making sure it goes through.
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These are the questions journalists should be asking, rather than concentrating on the details of the Muscat power station.
Who’ll supply the infrastructure?
Who brokered the deal?
Who’s got a vested interest (clue: acting in a manner opposed to the obligations of one’s official role)?
They have, and these questions haven’t only been asked by journalists. The replies are always fudged behind commercial interests, secrecy etc.
Mhux fl-interess tal-poplu li jkun jaf. Risposta tista’ jekk ikun il-hin tinghata f’seduta ohra.
The China Dock was built by hundreds (thousands?) of Chinese workers – could be for free. Perhaps we shall see a repeat story with the proposed Muscat power station.
Not to PN-bash again, but maybe if PN in power hadn’t appointed a bunch of prima donnas to head various government agencies, including a few who are clearly Labour and have no sense of corporate loyalty, the whole process would have been much smoother. Just maybe.
I think the PN did enough damage to itself allowing twats like Pullicino Orlando, Franco Debono and Jesmond Mugliett to represent it in the last general election.
Very well put. They never seem to learn.
Best comment ever .
And how many competent people do you know who would have been willing to head the agencies, with the sort of pay the opposition would not have objected to.
Competent people are in extremely short supply on this island, because most of them move on.
That’s why we need a streamlined government. There is far too much duplication.
Some government bodies are redundant.
And yet the government announces the setting up of another agency or department or council or committee as if it were an achievement in itself.
@ Thehobbit
Before the last election, JPO came across as a victim and Sant as the evil bully.
We all took his word for it, and it’s not the Nationalist Party’s fault that the image that springs to everybody’s mind when one remembers the whole episode, is of Sant standing underneath a logo in the TV studio, looking like a rabbit caught in headlights, incapable of answering JPO.
That Franco Debono was ambitious was well known, but few could have guessed at the amount of ambition that was bubbling inside him, and that he would turn out as being a little boy who wanted to be made minister no matter what.
The Mugliett choice was an oddity, but hey, he was popular with his constituents. The risk was assessed and taken.
Anyway, it’s useless now to rubbish past choices. We can’t change the past after all.
Great capture of the situation. I would add ‘Quite clearly, somebody has sold it a power station – and is paying for its electoral campaign – and somebody else is taking a cut, and several people are personally invested in making sure it goes through’
And I would add:
“Had it not been for the Joseph-Muscat-Labour Party who opposed Malta’s joining the EU for many decades, we could have joined the EU many years ago and would have received EU funds for the inter-connector and the gas pipeline decades ago, and we would by now be enjoying cleaner and cheaper energy.
It was Joseph-Muscat-Labour’s bad choices of the past which have distanced us from Europe and its policies which we are now trying to correct.
And Joseph-Muscat-Labour is once again trying to distance us from Europe and from those projects.”
What I find thoroughly insulting and annoying is when PL compares the “very, very” dubious 9c7 with the 18c unit cost, to come up with savings of some €187M of which we will get a share of €77M.
Since the interconnector is a commissioned project in execution the honest comparison should be between the 9c6 and 11c unit cost at which point the savings as from March 2014 (granted that there is no increase in gas prices) shrink to insignificance.
Moreover I have been told that shipping gas may have to deal with very stringent IMO regulations on shipping security distances. The Freeport activity comes to mind however I couldn’t be bothered to look it up. The proposal as is, does not have half a leg to stand on.
Qed tessagera. It’s 9cSIX.
They said that they will be hitting the road running. Obviously one of the first tasks will be the roadshow.
Is it too much to ask Konrad Mizzi where he intends to go? North Africa, central Europe, further north, where exactly?
‘hit the road running’? Would that be the one that goes directly to Dingli Cliff?
Easy, first stop – Montekristo
The coal-fired power station of Labour days still has an impact today.
Maltastar quoted oncologist Dr Stephen Brincat that the “worst” is still to come regarding the effects of heavy fuel oil because the effects on the entire Maltese population will take 30-40 years to be felt.
The purpose of this statement (at least as reported by Maltastar) was to counter the declarations of other cancer specialists who are insisting that Malta has a relatively low cancer rate.
The statement, however, has another implication. If “the cancerous effect of pollution from a power station” takes 30-40 years to be felt, the cancer cases of today are the result of power station pollution of 30-40 years ago when coal was used and stored in the open by the Mintoff government..
I don’t know why no journalist picked this up.
Labour are also having a field day with their HFO claims about its health detriments and what a bad choice it was.
They’ve gone as far as to call it a ‘cancer factory’, yet nobody bothers to counter this with the fact that the new extension meets the Air Quality Standards directive 50/2008 of the European Union.
Moreover, the harmful nitrogen oxides, sulphur oxides and dust particles are being captured and stored in silos to be disposed of in a controlled manner.
Why aren’t the PN screaming about this?
There is a worrying point everyone seems to be missing. PL is presenting their energy plan as a finished plan, all they need is a private company to come in and build/operate it.
plan is very specific – a specific type of plant, built in a specific place, using gas stores in a particular spot, etc.
Then suddenly, a few days ago, when asked about why they were not considering the Sargas proposal any more, Joseph and Konrad said that they too would be able to come forward with their proposals (as would everyone else).
That would be a completely different plant with a different location, would need a new study and involve a completely different build. How can this fit within the strict (read impossible) time-frames they are setting forward?
It is seriously worrying when a party tries to hook an election on the 25% reduction of a price which is up till today not discussed. Labour is not telling us if they are cutting off from for example 100% it could be 200% the 25 % would be only a measure and eventually the real price is on the bill and a baffled customer would then ask where is the real deduction?
Many shops in Malta make sales but it was a sale based on profits. Labour cannot deduct 25% from costs, it an only deduct if the price was much higher.
They can reduce for some time but not all the time and no guarantee till which time.
Also what guarantee do we really have on how much is the 75%?
Would we be able to pay the remaining 75%? What if we do not have a job?
Does Joseph Muscat have an answer to all this?
All this is academic really. At the moment not even if Lucifer himself were to appear and say that he supported the PL’s power station, would make any difference.
The people seem to want change, any change, whatever the conequences and are not ready to scratch beneath the surface.
And do not get me started on journalists.
The BA farce of a press conference did not even make Konrad Mizzi break into a sweat. Does no one research any more?
It looks like the Maltese will be heading to their own Tahrir square very soon.