Azernews.Az

By Kamila Aliyeva

Azerbaijan’s energy giant SOCAR has inaugurated a gas terminal and power plant built by ElectroGas Malta, partially owned by SOCAR Trading, in the city of Marsaxlokk, Malta.

The event was attended by a delegation led by SOCAR President Rovnag Abdullayev, Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat and other officials.

SOCAR had created favorable conditions in Malta for a complete switch from fuel oil as a source of electricity generation through supplying natural gas in the form of LNG to the new power plant in Malta and the state-owned energy company Enemalta.

Firstly, Delimara-1 power station operating on fuel oil was decommissioned.

PM Muscat spoke about the work of ElectroGas Malta with support of its shareholders SOCAR Trading, Siemens PV, and GEM Holding, and stated that implemented measures allowed to reduce price of electricity by 25 percent and emissions into the atmosphere by 90 percent.

Abdullayev, in turn, expressed the gratitude to the government of Malta for creating favorable conditions for implementation of such a large-scale project.

He also mentioned the perspective plans of SOCAR for work in Malta.

In the framework of the event, Abdullayev held a number of meetings with Maltese officials.

In 2013, as part of the ElectroGas Malta consortium, SOCAR Trading won a tender issued by the Maltese Government for gasification of the island for electricity generation.

In partnership with Siemens and the local investment company GEM, SOCAR Trading coordinated a project worth over 500 mln EUR to build a new 210 MW power plant and LNG regasification terminal on the island.

The construction work was started in December 2014 and, initial batch of LNG was received in January 2017. SOCAR Trading is the exclusive LNG supplier to the project ElectroGas Malta is considered to supply electricity and natural gas to the state-owned energy company Enemalta for 18 years.

SOCAR Trading SA is the marketing arm of Azerbaijan’s state oil company SOCAR. The company , which this year commissioned the ambitious integrated LNG-to-power project in Malta, expects to agree deals for similar projects elsewhere in the world in the coming years.

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Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva

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