A floating gas storage unit (FSU), headed for Malta from Singapore, will enable Maltese citizens to “start breathing cleaner air,” prime minister Joseph Muscat suggested. Due to arrive by September, the vessel will store LNG which will then be regasified onshore for use in new gas-fired power plants.
Some critics questioned why Malta chose a simple FSU over a floating regasification and storage (FRSU) unit, which would have avoided having to build an onshore regasification plant. Yet the prime minister backs the overall LNG-to-power project which he believes project will herald “turnaround of Malta’s energy sector.”
Electrogas Malta awarded a €300 million contract to Singapore’s Bumi Armada and Keppel Shipyards back in April 2014 to a vessel to a FSU. Works were completed in 17 months; the vessel left Singapore in early August and upon arrival in Malta, it will be permanently moored in Marsaxlokk Bay – just where a Siemens is contacted to build a 200 MW combined-cycle gas power project.
Project beset by delays
Questions surround the start of construction works, and a CCGT of this size usually takes just under two years to build. Siemens, a 33.33% shareholder in Electrogas Malta like Socar and GEM Holdings, was awarded an €175 million turnkey order to realise the project at the site of the existing Delimara power station.
No new deadline was given for completion of construction – let alone for its actual start. Electrogas missed a second deadline in May and put the blame on alleged issues with the conversion of the LNG tanker to permanent floating storage unit for the project. Earlier, there were been delays with the integrated pollution prevention control (IPPC) permit.
Staying optimistic, PM Muscat reiterated that the project would be the first step of Malta’s “breakaway from the old, inefficient and heavy fuel oil dependant plants, to a new energy mix, based on gas.” He believes that the new LNG-to-power will help ensure that electricity prices “remain low and sustainable.”