Oh she is the one who was harping on how Labour would clean the air and how it was the PN’s fault because of the power station in Birzebbugia (apparently she lives there) but in actual fact she was trying to get a nice iced bun for her hubby, hoping her husband will be the next police commissioner, imma she failed, although if I am not mistaken she was given something herself.

Jien nisthajjilom kurnuti kuntenti.

Qabduhhieli fuq tal-linja li t-tanker huwa safe. Ghidtilom li naqbel: “Mela tajjeb . Jien inhallikom tgawduh, filwaqt li nara li ma nikkuppax li nahli d-dawl ghax se jorhosli b’25%”
“X’jista’ jigri?” komplejt jien “nisma’ bumm, nitla’ fuq il-bejt halli nara x’gara xi ghaxar mili ‘l-isfel , u nerga nidhol norqod.”

Nghidilkom jien, li hawwadtilom il-wajers ta’ mohhom ghax fxiltom. Riedu kwazi jghiduli li jien egoist ghax m’hinix fil-periklu bhalom, imma ma setghux ghax fil-periklu Jo qalilom li m’humiex . Insomma gibtom jitkellmu wahedom.

Nghidilkom is-sewwa, thassartom! Imma m’hemmx x’taghmel.

Lucky you!

By the way, has anyone noticed that recently we have been getting more power cuts (at least in the Sliema area.) I wonder if this is a ‘kunnink plen’ to make sure ‘Sliemizi’ receive lower electricity bills. :-)

Having the pipeline carrying gas is much easier than managing the cryogenics, whatever the length.

And if they plan to connect, the same leg can be connected out at sea.

Compare that with a redundant structure with all that pipework on top jutting out to the middle of the bay, a regasifier on land practically scrap and most probably the Gemini.

And don’t forget that emergency services as well as inspection and maintenance equipment requires a second jetty running alongside and separated from the first.

Then there’s all the foam and suppression systems on land and some very stringent control systems and protocols. Land expropriation to ensure an exclusion zone, you’ll find we’re talking a minimum 1000m radius if things have to follow Industry directives.

If it’s gas coming through an underwater pipeline you’ve removed most of the risks of volumetric build up, which is where the risk is, vast amounts of gas in liquid state.

In other words you’ve transferred all the design headaches out to sea.

Malta is, also considered an earthquake prone area, and that’s a whole new ball game.

Finally, and maybe this one’s still an unknown, what happens if the incident happens, how on Earth are we supposed to fight the fire? Pumping water simply intensifies the fire remember, dedicated port management specialised surface craft required perhaps.

Starts to add up doesn’t it?

All I can hear at the moment is archeological remains and whether fireworks can be let off in the vicinity.

There are some important things which are not mentioned in the risk assesment.

One perhaps counter intuitive one is that the absence of an ignition source can actually cause a much greater disaster. A nearby ignition source will result in an intense fire in the vicinity whereas the absence of one may allow a cloud of combustible concentration to spread over a much larger area and eventually ignite explosively affecting a very large area.

Another thing is that they only consider so called ‘jets’ meaning fuel gushing out of a hole or a broken pipe. That places a limit of the rate of supply of fuel to a fire and consequently how big that fire can be and/or how far the gas can spread before becoming too rarefied to burn.

They however completely ignore scenarios involving rupture of a tank or even structural failure of the ship’s hull. Both of these can easily result from impact from another ship as well as the tanker breaking its moorings in heavy weather.

More importantly, the second scenario can even be initiated by a small leak in one of the tanks. The extremely cold liquid leaking into the space below the tanks can make the steel as brittle as glass while at the same time subjecting it to a huge temperature differential, being 180 below on the inner side and some 15 degrees on the outside. It is like pouring freezing water into a glass casserole coming straight out of the oven, only much worse.

Really? Silly me thought it was video showing an accident where sensors somehow mistook movement releasing the booms.

Guess what happens when it’s decided to have one of those on a ship moored at Marsaxlokk bay without some form of swell protection.

Could be why captain asked for a breakwater.

All things being equal, Muscat runs the risk of actually choosing the option which may take longer, ergo costlier, to engineer.

There can be no movement, call it settlement, anywhere, ever, along the jetty.

Whereas if the regasifier is put onto a properly refurbished tanker there’s no need for that structure.

There’s a plausible case for packaging the regasifier and the tanker in that being a temporary solution, or so he says, it will result much easier to hand over, being a complete package which the prospective client will most probably be looking for.

Not so a forty eight year old vessel which after eight years in port could very well req

Then there’s the notion that engineering systems tend to fail as in this case.

The Boeing 777 is claimed to be safest plane ever. That’s because it isn’t yet a statistic.

The bad news is that its sister the LNG Gemini will soon enter Marsaxlokk Bay never to leave again.