Jun 29 - Government Releases Expert Analysis Of GSD's Lloyd’s Register Report
The Government has today released an expert assessment of the Lloyd’s Register reports published by the GSD, which, as has been revealed by them cost £100,000.00 and was paid for by Spark, who submitted failed bids for the supply of gas contract and for a power station, and the company providing the rented generation plant at the time of the recent power cuts and in which the outages originated.
The assessment has been prepared for the Gibraltar Environmental Agency by the UK Health and Safety Laboratory (HSL)* which has been advising the Agency for some time. The Health and Safety Laboratory is the Laboratory of the UK Health and Safety Executive ("HSE"). The HSE is itself the UK regulator of all matters relating to Health and Safety. The HSE, together with the UK Environmental Agency, is the enforcement agency for the operation of Liquefied Natural Gas in the UK.
A full statement on the matter continues:
“The Spark's Lloyd's Report, published by the GSD, actually recognises that the HSE sets the standards which must be met in order to determine whether a proposal is acceptable. (See page 54 of the Lloyd's Report, Gibraltar LNG Terminal Quantitative Risk Assessment, "Conclusions"). Both the Government and the Health and Safety Laboratory recognise and respect the expertise of Lloyd's Register and do not question their integrity or methodology. It should be noted, however, that the GSD’s much-repeated claim that Lloyd’s Register is ‘the leading risk assessor in the world’ is a considerable exaggeration that not even Lloyd’s Register has ever made.
“The Health and Safety Laboratory has identified that the assumptions on which Lloyd’s Report based its analysis are different from those it has been studying in the process of consultation with the Gibraltar Environmental Agency, in order to inform Government on the LNG installation.
“For example, the Spark-commissioned Lloyd’s Report used by the GSD assumes, presumably based on the inaccurate information provided to Lloyd’s Register by Spark, that the tanks will be single skinned and much larger than those in the concept designs that the HSL is considering for Gibraltar, and that they are situated next to the cruise liner berths.
“Moreover, the assumed location on the North Mole on which the Lloyd’s Register report is based is not the one being considered. Again, this is presumably based on the false information that Spark has provided to Lloyd’s Register.
“In assessing the potential to place the LNG facility on the Detached Mole, there is an assumption, again presumably based on the information the GSD has provided to Lloyd’s Register, that LNG will be piped under water in liquid state, which is not what is being considered. In such a scenario, the proposed undersea pipeline would carry only re-gassified gas and not liquid gas.
“Spark’s Report refers, again presumably based on the information provided to Lloyd’s Register, to very large tankers delivering LNG. In fact this is not what is actually being considered in any of the concept designs put to Government.
“We can only assume that all of this incorrect information was provided to Lloyd's Register by the Spark Group of Companies, when they commissioned the report.
“In fact, the Health and Safety Laboratory's analysis of the Lloyd’s Register report states that they will be using more stringent criteria in their advice to the Gibraltar Environmental Agency than Lloyd's Register have applied in the report the GSD published.
“This alone should greatly reassure the public.
“HSL further confirms that many of the recommendations referred to in the Lloyd’s Register report are basic good advice, expected to be incorporated in any detailed final design. HSL add that “some of the recommendations relate to design options that perhaps should not have been assumed in the scope”. Both these points have been made repeatedly by the Government and were made again in the Minister for the Environment and Energy’s Budget speech to Parliament.
“HSL repeatedly states that the main critical findings by Lloyd’s Resister are based on wrong assumptions, presumably those errors having been made by the GSD when they briefed Lloyd’s Register.
“Significantly, the report concludes, in HSL's own words, that:
“The Lloyd’s Register study has not raised any issues that appear, at this stage, incapable of being addressed by suitable concept selection, detailed design and the use of international good practice standards and procedures.””
The Chief Minister, Fabian Picardo, said: "The scandalous attempt by Daniel Feetham to scaremonger his way into Government has clearly fallen apart. We said already in our initial reaction to the Lloyd's report that the Government respects Lloyd’s Register’s expertise and notes that its report explicitly sets out how to mitigate the risks involved in the operation of LNG to tolerable levels. In this respect, as we stated already, the conclusions of Lloyd’s are in keeping with those of the Government’s own experts, as HSL has now confirmed, namely that with proper planning and mitigation the use of LNG as a power generation and bunkering fuel in Gibraltar is entirely feasible and acceptable to UK standards of risk, as assessed by the Health and Safety Executive. But the information provided to Lloyd's Register by Spark appears to be totally different to the plans which are being assessed by the Government. For that reason, the HSL assessment demonstrates that the facts on which that Report is based are into a fictional terminal, with assumptions made that are totally different to those which the Government and its experts are working. The Health and Safety Laboratory’s assessment demonstrates why the public should not listen to the GSD's scaremongering on this subject."
Minister for the Environment and Energy, Dr John Cortes, commented, “The Health and Safety Laboratory are the undisputed experts in the field of risk assessment, and they are the ones we have clearly stated we have been relying on all along. They have confirmed everything we have been saying. That is, that the Lloyd’s report was based on inaccurate information, that we have to await final design details before a full assessment is possible and that there are no issues that are ‘incapable of being addressed.’ This is clear evidence that the Government is talking to the right people, following the right processes, and considers safety to be paramount. I’d ask those who have expressed concern on hearing the alarmist statements by the GSD to await the final details and assessments before reaching their conclusions. The Opposition should immediately apologise for having jumped the gun and provided false information to Lloyd’s and to the people of Gibraltar in order to try to create panic and to worry our people unnecessarily. The Government, the GEA and the Environmental Agency all take the issue of safety very seriously and are following due process to ensure that a safe and reliable power solution is in place within two years.”
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