EMEA News
War of Words Heats Up Over Gibraltar LNG Bunkering
A war of words over the prospect of liquefied natural gas (LNG) bunkering in Gibraltar heated up again this week, with the Gibraltar Social Democrat (GSD) opposition party Wednesday accusing the Government of taking a "u-turn" on the matter, among other indiscretions.
Her Majesty's Government of Gibraltar (HMGoG) last Friday signed a deal with Shell for the construction of a small regasification unit and the supply of LNG for power generation, something GSD insists is really about a desire to bring LNG bunkering to the country.
"[W]e have today released a statement to say that Government appear not to understand that the discussion has moved on from the simple provision of LNG storage to supply the power station to the reality of offshore, and possibly onshore commercial bunkering," GSD said Wednesday in a post on its website.
In that statement, Trevor Hammond, Shadow Minister for the Environment, said the Government has "made clear that its agreement with Shell includes offshore bunkering as part of the deal, something we had said would be the case all along to make Shell's interest financially viable."
Hammond noted that last year MP Joe Bossano implied that an earlier deal with Shell had only happened because of an intent to supply LNG bunkers.
Speaking to GBC News last November, Mr Bossano said: "The amount [of LNG] that we're going to store, if that was all that Shell expected to sell from a presence in Gibraltar they'd tell us, 'look, there isn't enough business here to make that attractive to us, but we can see that there is a huge potential.'
"If they were selling us 63,000 units in a year, which would be the consumption of the generating station, the potential for bunkering would be 1.5 million units."
Hammond also noted that the response to Bossano's comments from Gibraltar's Minister for Energy, Dr. John Cortes, was to say that LNG bunkering was "quite some way away and not part of the power station project."
"It seems bunkering was not so far away nor the facilities so small and this must have already been under discussion at the time of that denial being issued," said Hammond.
"The Government is otherwise intent on concealing the truth from people and there is no question now that despite the denial by Dr Cortes, Shell's interest has always been in bunkering as stated by Mr Bossano. This was always a done deal, there is nothing in the public domain to demonstrate that this activity is acceptably safe and indeed, recent events at sea would demonstrate that the risks are very real."
Hammond did not elaborate as to which events he was referring to.
For the record, last November Cortes also noted that HMGoG's interest in LNG bunkering "is nothing new and has been publicly discussed on a number of occasions.
"A move to LNG bunkering would bring huge environmental benefits by drastically reducing the threat of oil pollution and the damage that causes."
