Mar 04 - Number Six: Opposition’s “Lack Of Understanding Of LNG Is Worrying”
The Government has said that the Opposition’s incessant criticism of its handling of the proposed LNG power station and potential bunkering of LNG “makes it abundantly clear that it is they who wish to stifle the debate on LNG and manipulate the importance of this issue in a desperate attempt to score cheap political points.”
Number Six says that, if the Opposition have legitimate questions regarding LNG in Gibraltar that have not yet been answered by the Government, then such questions should be asked in the appropriate forum, such as during one of the monthly meetings of Parliament. Before they do so, however, the Government says that “perhaps their purported ‘experts’ should explain the facts to them and perhaps they should read the information that they suppose supports their arguments.”
Indeed, says the Government, Mr Feetham’s latest tweet on LNG cites an article in the New York Times that he implies is to do with the certification of fire departments to handle LNG. The link, however, is not to the New York Times but to a lawyers’ blog called Lexology. Moreover, argues Number Six, the article is about ‘the growing percentage of the nation’s [USA] trucking fleet that is converting to LNG’, and how lawyers are dealing with ‘out-of-date’ legislation that requires trucks fuelled by LNG to travel along ‘certified intrastate transportation routes’. This is, says the Government, a “clear demonstration of the Opposition’s obvious and deeply concerning lack of understanding of LNG and the fuel industry. The Opposition’s incapability to get basic facts like the source of their ‘evidence’ right brings the validity and reliability of their arguments into serious question.”
The Government says it has been given a mandate by the electorate to work in the best interests of Gibraltar as a whole. It repeats that the cancellation of the contract for a power station that would have doubled the cost of electricity to the public “whilst spewing out toxic black fumes from within the Gibraltar Nature Reserve” was undoubtedly in Gibraltar’s best interests. In signing that contract, says the Government, the Opposition did not consider the consequences of exponential fuel price increases, dwindling global reserves of diesel and the polluting effects of its waste products on the people of Gibraltar. The Government says the Opposition are clearly still in mourning for a project that was always doomed to fail.
Moreover, the Government argues that the GSD’s call for transparency and open debate at this moment in time “is pretty hollow in the context of the secrecy and lack of debate that surrounded their own proposals for a power station at Lathbury Barracks”. In any case, it says that there has been on-going debate for the last few weeks so the Opposition should be happy about this. The problem for them, says the Government, “is that they have lost the argument and already lost the debate.”
The Government says it has chosen to look to the future and provide Gibraltar with an economically prudent, environmentally sustainable and consistently reliable source of fuel for decades to come. As part of this investment in Gibraltar’s future the Government is considering the prospects of offering LNG bunkering facilities, which have been successful in Norway and Sweden.
A statement ended: “It would be irresponsible of the Government not to investigate every technical development which has the potential to improve and enlarge Gibraltar’s bunkering industry just as it would be to dismiss any other potential to ensure our future economic growth and stability.”
