The liquefied natural gas terminal at Vasiliko will be completed, Energy Minister George Papanastasiou promised on Tuesday.

Addressing the House energy committee, he said the project “is feasible, should be completed, and will be completed”.

However, he did admit that Technip, the company hired as a consultant by public natural gas infrastructure company Etyfa, “strongly recommends that it is impossible and operationally dangerous to put out a call for tenders at this time” for the project to be carried out.

This assertion did not impress committee chairman and Disy MP Kyriakos Hadjiyiannis, who said “a delaying tactic is being followed with the aim and desire that this project not be completed”.

He said he expected that “there would at least be a proposal on the table to break the deadlock” over the LNG terminal and added that “the government as a whole is following a policy of delay”.

But Papanastasiou said the delays had come about because “there are not many options at the moment because the project is incomplete.

“We have a ship, which will probably be ready next month after passing the final checks, and when that, the most important asset in this project, is ready, the rest of it will have to be completed in some way so that the ship can dock at the pier to begin gasification and the use of natural gas in conventional power generation,” he said.

The ship he was referring to is the floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU) Prometheas, which is currently in Malaysia as part of the process of its certification for use.

It had been stated earlier in the year that Prometheas would be certified in October.

Papanastasiou also said Technip had recommended “another study”, which he then described as “a gap study which will identify any deviations in the design from the construction or from materials which have been purchased”.

This, he said, will be possible “within the next two months” at a maximum.

He added that after that, “we will know the next steps”.

“If this study reveals significant issues, the next step should essentially be taken, which is a front-end engineering design. That is a mini redesign which will indicate the course of the project,” he said.

A better scenario, he added, would be if “no significant issues arise” in the project so far, thus allowing for Etyfa to put out a tender for a new contractor for the project and to allow it to continue.

He then went on to speak about what Technip had described as a “serious risk that there will be no interest from serious developers”.

Later in the session, he was whether the CPP-Metron Consortium (CMC) had sent a letter regarding an out-of-court settlement after the company had torn up its contract with the government to construct the terminal last year, replying that he has “not received anything at all”.

He said the legal service had received a letter, however, and that he would meet legal service representatives on Wednesday to discuss the matter.

Some MPs declared in their statements that the government “does not care if people pay” extra, either in electricity bills or taxes, with the delays to the terminal ongoing, with Papanastasiou saying that “this specific position is not documented”.

He was then asked about the European public prosecutor’s office (EPPO)’s investigation into possible procurement fraud, misappropriation of EU funds and corruption related to the Vasiliko LNG terminal, with one MP saying he “would not be surprised if someone went to prison” over it.

In response, he said the matter is “being investigated at the moment”.

A month ago, he had said the government was engaged in “damage limitation” following reports of “serious safety issues” regarding the Vasiliko terminal’s construction, with television channel Omega having reported there were “design and materials issues” with the project.

“There are very serious technical issues, which make it impossible to continue the work at this time. That is why the work on the pier has been at a standstill for months and no timetable has been given by the authorities for the completion of the work,” Omega quoted a “competent source” as having said.

The government’s goal had been for the construction of the LNG terminal at Vasiliko to be complete by the end of this year.

Work ground to a halt last year after the CMC tore up its contract with the government to construct the terminal.

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

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.

Another setback came in July last year when the European Commission demanded that Cyprus repay almost €69 million which had been paid in grants for the terminal.

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

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