John Culatto
PEOPLE passing Gibraltar’s port need not worry if they see a lot of blue lights and sirens around the liquid natural gas terminal at the Gibraltar power station on Thursday.
The emergency services will be training for an accident at the North Mole facility which both refuels the power plant and passing boats.
The government said the ‘simulated exercise will involve live play’ and comes after the emergency services did a ‘table-top exercise’ at the end of June.
It advised the public not to be alarmed by ‘an increased presence of emergency services and first responders to the area’.
“This exercise organised by the Office of Civil Contingencies has set very specific training objectives to test interagency response and communications in an LNG terminal accident scenario,” Minister Leslie Bruzon said.
The modern power plant replaced the old Waterport power station in 2019.
It provides 80 megawatts of cleaner energy that lowered emissions around the Rock compared to its diesel predecessor.
The LNG terminal alongside it is supplied by global firm Shell using a fuel that is slowly replacing more carbon heavy substances like diesel in the shipping industry.
The natural gas is stored in five double-walled stainless steel tanks at the north-western corner of the North Mole, where most cruise-liners anchor.
Gibraltar is one of the biggest refuelling port for tankers and cargo ships in the whole of the Mediterranean.
But local environmentalists Environmental Safety Group have criticised the bunkering process as the biggest polluter of all the territory’s processes.
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