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ElectroGas Responds To Leaked Bitcoin Mining Email: ‘It Was Just A General Query’

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Bitcoin mining consumes energy (Photo: Ethereum World News)

The ElectroGas consortium has insisted it never followed up on a proposal by one of its partners to use the Delimara power station to mine Bitcoin.

“ElectroGas Malta can confirm that there were no negotiations or specific plans back then or even now for that matter to proceed in this regard,” the consortium’s CEO Franz Doerfler told Lovin Malta. “The correspondence you mention was simply a general query regarding the application of LNG generated power in other fields and no further action or discussion was taken.”

Internal email correspondence revealing this proposal was published by Nationalist MP Jason Azzopardi last night during a parliamentary debate on a recent national audit investigation into the power station.

Electrogas Malta Aecom

The LNG power station in Delimara (Photo: Aecom)

In August 2017, Electrogas director Turab Musayev, who works for Azeri state-owned Socar, had proposed Bitcoin mining at the power station to the consortium’s former commercial director Catherine Halpin.

Halpin got back to Musayev a few days later to inform him that such cryptocurrency mining installations tend to be “a difficult business case” and are usually built in much colder climates than Malta. She also warned him that Electrogas will likely find it tough to obtain approval from Enemalta to lease out land for such an installation.

Azzopardi described the email as proof of “a scandal within a scandal within another mega scandal”.

“[This is] what Joseph Muscat meant by “the best of times”…sowing seeds of a whirlwind,” he said in a tweet.

The leaked email forms part of a massive cache of 650,000 ElectroGas documents that were leaked to Daphne Caruana Galizia shortly before her murder. The emails eventually found their way to the Daphne Project, an international consortium of journalists set up to complete Caruana Galizia’s stories. Upon ElectroGas’ request, the leak is subject to an investigation by the cyber crime police, as well as a magisterial inquiry.

READ NEXT: The Prime Minister Is Keeping A Major Secret From Everyone In Malta And It’s About Time He Comes Clean

Tim is interested in the rapid evolution of human society and is passionate about justice, human rights and cutting-edge political debates. You can follow him on Instagram or Twitter/X at @timdiacono or reach out to him at [email protected]

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