Mar 23 - GSD: No Expert Report On LNG Prior To Power Station Tender
The Opposition has said that it would have been obvious to anyone listening to the exchanges in Parliament on the power station and LNG, that the Government made the decision to locate a gas and diesel fired power station at the North Mole “without having any kind of risk assessment reports from experts on the supply and storage of LNG beforehand.”
In earlier Press Releases, says the GSD, the Government had said it had first made contact with the Health and Safety Executive on 7 June 2013 “and entered into a contract with the Health and Safety Laboratory to provide consulting services on all aspects of LNG related to the project”. It then went on to say that “in January 2014, two representatives of the HSL came to Gibraltar to assess the two proposed sites for the storage of LNG”.
The GSD argues that the Government made the policy decision to locate the power station at the North Mole in 2012 and, in the first half of 2013, the project went out to tender. The final date for the registration of interest under the tender was 31 May 2013 and the closing date for tender submissions was 1 August 2013.
The contact with the Health and Safety Laboratory therefore post dated the policy decision to locate the power station at the North Mole and indeed the issue of the tender, according to the GSD. The Minister for the Environment, says the party, was given many opportunities during questions by the Leader of the Opposition to identify what experts were consulted before the decision was made to locate a gas fired power station at the North Mole and none was forthcoming.
The GSD now says that the Government should have had very clear plans as to how LNG would be stored and supplied to the power station before the decision was taken to go out to tender. Otherwise, it says, this appears to be a “very poorly planned project” that has taken nearly four years to get off the ground and Gibraltarians are still none the wiser as to how storage and supply of the LNG is to be handled.
The GSD says that the more it probes the Government on this issue the more it appears this project has been poorly planned.
“That simply increases our concerns as to the safety issues associated with this project so close to densely populated areas,” concluded a statement.
