The government’s goal is for the construction of the liquefied natural gas terminal at Vasiliko to be complete by the end of 2025, Energy Minister George Papanastasiou said on Tuesday.

Speaking at an event at the electricity authority (EAC)’s headquarters, he said the government thus aims to be able to channel natural gas into conventional power generation in early 2026.

“I know this is an optimistic goal, but we must set optimistic goals,” he said.

The setting of this goal comes weeks after President Nikos Christodoulides had said the process of purchasing project management services from public natural gas infrastructure company Etyfa is “being completed” with the aim of restarting work on the terminal as soon as possible.

Work had ground to a halt earlier this year after the CPP-Metron Consortium (CMC) tore up its contract with the government to construct the terminal.

Once Etyfa has selected a project manager, the individual will assist Etyfa in drafting tender documents for the contracts for the remaining works at Vasiliko, which are to be re-tendered following the termination of the contract.

He then added that the floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU) Prometheas, which will form part of the LNG project, will arrive on the island at some point in December.

CMC had accused Etyfa of “bullying” and of leaving them to work “without proper or timely payments” for years.

They added Etyfa and its advisers on the project “had little to no relevant experience in any of the essential components for delivering a project of this nature: oil and gas, engineering, procurement and construction works and conversion of an LNG carrier to a floating storage regasification unit.”

“The position has become untenable. Contrary to the promises that were made by the [energy] minister in March, CMC has still not received any payment whatsoever for its work in 2024.

“That is but the latest failure in a four-year history characterised by wrongful withholdings and delayed payments. No contractor can be expected to work indefinitely on credit. That was not the deal that CMC signed up to. It was not the deal that the EU agreed to fund,” they said.

The FSRU had been one of the key points of contention between Etyfa and CMC, with CMC insisting that the vessel was ready in Shanghai and that Etyfa had “inexplicably refused to take delivery” of it while also frequently not meeting payment deadlines.

The situation worsened after the contract was terminated when the European Commission demanded that Cyprus repay almost €69 million which had been paid in grants for the terminal.

The energy ministry had announced it had received a letter from the European Commission which listed “possible irregularities which occurred during the evaluation period of the tender” for the construction project.

The commission’s letter, according to the ministry, “alleges two substantive violations”, the first being the criteria for awarding the tender [to CMC] in December 2019 and the second being the signing of the bilateral agreement upon approval of an additional €25m in funding in June 2022.

The European public prosecutor’s office (EPPO) had earlier in the same month publicly announced the opening of an investigation into possible procurement fraud, misappropriation of EU funds and corruption related to the Vasiliko LNG terminal.

Cyprus signed the contract for the LNG project in December 2019. The entire project should have taken 22 months to complete.