Muscat, Konrad Mizzi en route to Singapore for LNG tanker

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat is en route to Singapore to preside over the official the inauguration ceremony of the LNG storage vessel to be berthed outside Marsaxlokk and used at the new gas-fired power plant in Delimara.

The prime minister is accompanied by minister without portfolio Konrad Mizzi, the minister who was stripped of his energy and health portfolios following the Panama Papers revelations, OPM chief of staff Keith Schembri, OPM permanent secretary Ronald Mizzi and legal consultant Aron Mifsud Bonnici.  

In a statement, the OPM said Muscat was invited by Floating Storage Unit Armada LNG Mediterrana, the company which carried out the vessel’s conversion into a floating storage unit for Liquefied Natural Gas.

The tanker is expected to reach Malta in September, the statement said.

The LNG power station was originally envisaged to be completed in March 2015, but following delays, then-energy minister Konrad Mizzi had said that the gas plant would be delayed by 15 months and be completed in June 2016.

However, a delay in the conversion of the LNG tanker that will be used as a permanent floating storage unit meant that the second deadline had to be missed.

On Sunday, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat declined to give any deadline for the completion of the LNG power station. Speaking on One Radio in an interview recorded prior to his departure to Singapore, Muscat said the LNG tanker at Birzebbugia would be used for a limited time until Malta would have its gas pipeline with Italy in place.