Natural gas is lighter than air

Charles Flores’s lament for the Nationalist Opposition (TMIS 1 Jan. 2017) has some qualities to commend it, but balanced analysis and accurate information are not among them.

Take his astonishment at the “insensitivity” of the PN to the magnitude of its defeat in the final vote on the IPPC permit for the LNG power station. Only five years ago, the PL suffered a similar setback over the IPPC permit for the BWSC plant. The only vote against was that of the PL representative on the MEPA board, who had nothing to say during the proceedings.

To return to the present: the government made the going as tough as possible for its adversaries with the late release of 15,000 pages of documentation relevant to the LNG power station IPPC. The Environment & Resources Authority (ERA) played along with the game by allowing a mere 40 days for perusal, digestion and comment.

The PN and its supporters did collide with some obstacles of their own making. At the top of the list was that ‘casual’ phrase about ‘an acceptable number of casualties’ in the case of an accident on the FSU. Expressions of contempt, demands for explanations and/or the head of the Greek consultant Papadakis rose to high heaven. Papadakis himself made it abundantly clear that the fault lay with his English and not his intentions.

Much time was spent on demands that the FSU be moored outside Marsaxlokk Bay. Once the option of a FSRU had been rejected in favour of a FSU two years ago, such demands, though known to be pointless, were made repeatedly by PN speakers. There followed another PN mantra: the Electrogas PS was redundant. The PN arguments in support of that view were hardly impressive and, worse – though this seems to have escaped their adversaries, were actually a boomerang. What would the PN do with the gas they are so keen to get through a pipeline? They would have to have a close approximation to the Electrogas PS to use it in, otherwise the expense of a pipeline would not be justified.

The benefits of the ‘cleaner air’ the LNG PS is to bring with it were much trumpeted by Flores, who repeated the tale of a PN addicted to HFO use, shored up by references to the old ENI pipeline offers and, of course, to the 2013 oil scandal. To make the same case, the government went in for a huge volume of newspaper and television advertisement.

Flores could not understand why the PN Opposition refused to jump on the bandwagon of ‘much cleaner air’ coming from the switch from HFO to gas: it did not question that assertion. Yet only a few weeks ago, Enemalta CEO Frederick Azzopardi, by way of cover for PM Muscat’s empty promise to switch BWSC to diesel the day he was elected, had expressed satisfaction with the efficiency of the BWSC scrubbers in reducing pollution. Even more relevant is the fact that the agent mainly determining local air quality is land transport and not Delimara PS. That seems to have escaped Flores, the PN and that fond mother in the TVM advert much concerned with seeing her son grow up healthy. On the other hand, it did not escape Enemed, which supported its rise in fuel prices by the promise of a cleaner diesel with “23 per cent less emissions”.

That brings us to another Flores claim: that “…the environmental NGOs joined in heralding this new era of much cleaner air as a result of the switch to gas from heavy fuel oil”. Flores’s cast of mind – and that of political parties – would not imagine a situation where an NGO representative on a board was not given clear orders on how to vote on an important issue. But that is how NGOs tend to operate. The BWSC IPPC case, when NGO representative Philip Manduca voted for a demonstrably bogus application, showed that quite clearly.

In this case, there were two NGO interventions. In one, Din l-Art Ħelwa (DLH) after being heckled by the “rented” crowd (a specifically ‘PL’ tactic) gave up part of its speaking time to Dr Anne Fenech; the other was the Alan Deidun vote.

I daresay both moves were misguided. If DLH had been given speaking time, then its representative should have arrived with a prepared case and spoken accordingly. As for Alan Deidun, his claim to have voted for the granting of the IPPC permit on ‘cleaner air’ grounds showed him up as being poorly informed – and beyond lack of information, as lacking concern for the deplorable methods used by the government, ERA and the “rented” crowd. An abstention would have been the proper response. But in saying that, I must admit to feeling that there was a general NGO failure in this matter. Not one of the NGOs Deidun represents had the sense to call a meeting before the final vote so that Deidun could at least be made aware of their views on this matter.

There was another event that should have pushed Deidun to abstain. In the account of the final session published by TMI on 20 December under the byline of Kevin Schembri Orland there was the following: “Birzebbuga Mayor Joe Cutajar Buttigieg said….‘More than 90% of residents say that the chimney is not acceptable. Is it acceptable when 15% died from cancer within two months? The Delimara power station is a cancer factory. Give the residents clean air’.”

There was no record of any ERA Board member making the slightest objection to this grossly unethical and unscientific rubbish, even though there were at least three university professors present (the fourth was hors de combat from a ‘conflict of interest’).

The final Flores comment is also ill-informed and hypocritical. He says: “Both the economic and health arguments have been won, while the risk factor is certainly much lower than when people had gigantic oil storage tanks metres away from their front doors in places like Birzebbuga.” What “economic argument”? The lowering of utility rates clearly had nothing to do with the nonfunctioning Electrogas PS. The impacts of the Electrogas loan guarantees and the alleged contract of purchase of electricity and plant – surely part of the “economic argument – have not even been published. The “health argument” as made has a bogus claim of a large improvement in air quality attributed to “the change to gas”. And, as the final counter to the imagination of Homo Floresiensis, is there any record of any concern from the PL when in Opposition about those monstrous tanks at

There was no record of any ERA Board member making the slightest objection to this grossly unethical and unscientific rubbish, even though there were at least three university professors present