Obviously liquefaction of methane gas to produce LNG is more expensive relative to pipeline gas.

I believe both options are feasible for Malta. Pipeline gas (Plan A) is cheap. However, pipeline gas from Sicily ultimately comes from Libya, which is an unstable country and likely to turn off the Greestream pipeline, as indeed happened during the Libyan civil war.

In that case, transport facility for LNG by ship and regasification plant would be the only option (Plan B).

Well, a drip irrigation systems is a system of pipes. Isn’t a gas pipeline a system of pipes?

And the water to the roundabouts was supplied from a mobile vessel.

Don’t worry. It’s all “on track” and “doable.”

The PL, pressured by their last chance to beat the PN at an election (the previous real and true election win was in 1996) gave all, promised everything to everyone, threw caution to the wind and following the demonisation of the versatile, efficient and CLEAN BWSC engines that could run on either HFO, diesel or gas, came out with their version of physics and chemistry and promised us lower priced tariffs by burning higher-priced fuels.

The cheapest fuel is coal but coal is a no-no in Malta, the the next cheapest id HFO then LPG then CNG then LNG.

LNG is the most expensive fuel because it is the cleanest and the price is increasing year on year with inter-annual variability due to winter demands in the northern hemisphere, where most people live.

So I just cannot see how Joseph Muscat and his sidekick can manage to produce snake oil, I mean cheaper electricity by burning costlier fuel when Enemalta is already losing money when selling electricity at 16 cents a unit. For the snake oil salesmen to keep their promise the basic rate cannot be more than 12 cents per kWh (unit of electricity) when it is known that this rate does not exist anywhere in Europe. The cheapest electricity at the moment is found in France which sells nuclear-powered electricity at 15 cents.

So, Malta would have diversified its electrical power budget into two- sources; baseload produced locally by the BWSC machines powered by petroleum gas served through the EU-funded pipeline, and the EU-funded interconnector. Thus, we would have removed all stocks of environmentally hazardous fuels from our tiny little island.

But will the snake oil salesmen manage to sell electricity at 12 cents a unit? Of course they will. The plan is to play with accounting, reducing the cost of electricity superficially while taxing us indirectly as our finance minister has already promised.

How?

The plan which is now in place was to fill all strategic boards and positions such as chairpersons, CEOs and the chief of police with party men in the hope that the party would be able to control everything, from the national accounts to who becomes a Maltese passport holder to what’s shown on TVM.

But the edifice is already cracking. Each day, like the sun rises up every morning we have a new gaffe and worse than that, each gaffe is worse than the previous. But the party men do not bother since their real plan is to make money and the best way to make a quick buck is to make it through the biggest purchases Malta has ever seen.

Besides the sale of citizenship, which is actually a graft machine, the other one is the purchase of 2 billion euros of LNG in ten years. 4 billion for the 18 years of the contracted period. This is the best place to have a finger in. We never had, in Malta a purchase that big. NEVER. I appeal to everyone to see through the charade of the cheap electricity promise which is not cheap. It is expensive. No one is going to sell us cheap energy for 18 years. This is another false promise from the snake oil salesmen.

The websites of Siemens and SOCAR Trading SA (and SOCAR) do not show any news about their win in Malta, which was announced publicly on Sunday 13 October by Konrad Mizzi.

To be fair, in the case of SOCAR, I searched even their ‘news’ dated before 13 October 2013. I thought that if the Azeris are able to announce the results of general elections in their country before the elections are held, then they should be able to announce the results of tiny Malta’s public procurement process for a gas power plant. This time, this was not the case. So may be if the general elections were fair, as declared by Dr. Anglu Farrugia, then perhaps it is Malta’s public bidding process that was not fair.

But let’s not deviate into ‘insignificant matters.’

On the other hand, Gasol plc has featured its win in Malta very prominently.

It is understandable that the contractual capex amounts involved are perhaps relatively large for Gasol but relatively small for Siemens and SOCAR.

However, the strategic relevance of working with a monopolistic operator in an EU country with a strategic location for LNG transportation should be news.

Also, assisting a country to transform its energy source from oil to gas should also be news worthy.

And based on what the Prime Minister of Malta has said, working with a corporation in which the Chinese have made a strategic ‘investment’ that could turn the country (which so far never extracted one drop of oil from its territory) into an exporter of energy is of news value.

It is also not said that in the case of SOCAR, an 18-year contract for the monopolistic supply of gas to the entire power station complex on Malta, without any price regulatory clauses after year 5, would not be quite substantial in value and relevance.

I thought that this omission by Siemens and SOCAR was rather – to quote the Clowns in Castille – “surreal.”

All those curly bits…. you know… to make a big circle.

Thank god for Computer Aided Design software.

Roundabouts, perfect.

Jozef probably meant that the ‘offshore station’ is where the node is formed where the Malta section of the pipeline meets the main trunk originating in Libya and terminating in Sicily.

Joining such a pipeline is not a matter of welding a ‘T’ like one would tapping a domestic water line to branch out service to another room.

The EU plans date back to September 2006 and the Malta ‘leg’ was already mentioned and deemed feasible.

It is wrong to assume that the Malta pipeline would have been a direct Malta-Sicily connection.

EU paid (85% to be precise) pipeline = no commissions.

LNG, Regas plant, Power Station contract = mucho, mucho pesos in commissions to local Labour Agents and a healthy cut to the Labour Party, no doubt!