The EU has pledged to phase-out support for fossil-fuel infrastructure – but energy ministers are arguing for an exception to be made for Malta

EU energy ministers are pushing to allow public funds to help build a gas pipeline to a power station in Malta co-owned by a businessman who is awaiting trial for the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.

Officials and MEPs will tomorrow begin thrashing out new rules aimed at phasing out EU subsidies for fossil fuel projects.

However, late last week EU ambassadors confirmed that Malta and Cyprus had secured exemptions for pipelines that would connect them to European gas networks.

In practice that means the €400m Melita pipeline project, designed to transport gas from Gela in Sicily to Delimara in Malta, could be built using EU funds. 

Cyprus also stands to benefit from an exemption to the phase-out of EU support for fossil fuel infrastructure. The €7 billion EastMed pipeline is an even bigger endeavour than the Malta-Italy link – it will link Cyprus to the European gas network along with Greece and Israel.

The move was criticised by environmental campaigners because it would lock-in Malta’s dependence on the Delimara gas-fired power station, which is partly owned by the man accused of having masterminded the killing of Caruana Galizia.

The Maltese businessman Yorgen Fenech was previously a director of Electrogas and along with his family owns a key stake in the company, which operates the Delimara power station. He was charged this year with conspiracy in the murder of Caruana Galizia. Maltese prosecutors have recommended a life sentence and he is due to stand trial. Fenech denies playing any part in the killing.

Before his arrest, he was chief executive of his family business, the Tumas Group, which teamed up with other Maltese families to secure a one third stake in Electrogas. He owns shares in the venture through Tumas and through a separate company. His uncle and Tumas chairman Raymond Fenech said he was unaware of the Council of Europe proposals. 

“Yorgen Fenech is a minority shareholder in Tumas Group holding less than 4 per cent of the Company’s shares which have devolved through inheritance”, he added.

Caruana Galizia was investigating the awarding of the Delimara power station contract to Electrogas when she was killed in a car bombing in 2017. Maltese police have said they believe she was killed over her reporting on the power station.

Barnaby Pace, a gas campaigner at Global Witness, the corruption and environmental organisation, said: “This pipeline threatens to lock Malta into using polluting fossil fuels and dealing with this rotten fossil gas project, tied to the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia, for decades to come. The EU needs to put the interests of Maltese and EU citizens before the profits of big polluters and refuse to be involved with yet another scandalous fossil fuelled deal.”

Electrogas argues that the gas-fired power station marked an environmental improvement when it opened in 2017 because it replaced a plant that ran on heavy fuel oil, which is even more polluting than gas. Malta is also supplied with electricity from an interconnector linking it to Sicily.

Delimira is presently powered using liquefied natural gas, which is brought in by boat. Along with an electricity interconnector from Sicily, it meets most of the country’s power needs. Only about 7 per cent of electricity in Malta is generated from renewable sources, one of the lowest rates in the EU.

An EU official said that Malta had the support of other EU ambassadors when the exemption was secured on Friday.

“Several delegations explicitly spoke in favour of maintaining the derogation”, the official said.

A group of 11 countries, including Ireland, Germany and the Netherlands, had originally pushed for existing fossil fuel projects to be excluded from support. But Cyprus and Malta, supported by most Eastern European delegations, were able to point to a ten-year-old European Council conclusion that “no EU member state should remain isolated from the European gas and electricity networks after 2015”.

Picture: Wikicommons/Continentaleurope