You would assume that after Malta came out of a national political crisis caused by the government’s corruption with the Electrogas contract, and during Europe’s current energy crisis, the Maltese government would come out with a new and sensible overhaul of our energy policy.
Instead, it will be more of the same as the government intends to keep working with the Electrogas consortium which includes Socar and the Tumas Group. The only difference today is that gas will be purchased from Enel instead of Shell, while the government keeps subsidizing the profits for Electrogas. Meanwhile, the government has given us no details about the Chinese owned oil-fired power station which is also probably running at a profit at the expense of the Maltese taxpayer. And we only know that Enemalta is making a loss and is surviving with government subsidies only thanks to a report by Standards & Poors. The report states that Malta has been buying electricity from its interconnector with Sicily at the price of EUR58.09/mWh in 2020 but this increased to EUR148.02/mWh in 2021. In addition, Enemalta was given a positive rating on the condition that the government will keep subsidizing it and not because it forecasts that Enemalta would ever turn a profit, contrary to what the Labour media is telling you.
The Maltese government is also hiding details about its latest gas purchase agreements. Buying gas at formulas which peg the price of gas to the Brent Crude Oil price is a common practice in Europe although this formula can come with many differences as well. There have been so far no reports on our purchases of oil for the Chinese-owned BWSC plant. Miriam Dalli will be attending an energy meeting of the EU energy ministers soon where she will probably share Malta’s energy policy which we don’t know yet unless this energy policy is just more of the same while we keep subsidising the profits of Electrogas and Shanghai Electric.
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