GIBRALTAR was plunged into a three-hour blackout after a cascade of failures knocked out power across the entire territory.
The outage came on the same evening the Rock hosted hundreds of international gaming investors at a glitzy event at in the Sunborn.
The cut began at around 6pm on June 11 and power was not restored until close to 9pm.
The Olive Press understands the blackout was triggered by a fault in a small control board at the LNG plant responsible for regulating the flow of gas to the power station — when it failed, the gas supply cut out entirely.
Two gas engines at the North Mole Power Station tripped as a result.
A diesel engine remained online and the Battery Energy Storage System — a £16.5m installation bought specifically to protect against outages — absorbed what load it could.
But both the remaining diesel engine and the batteries were then also lost before engineers could cut power to parts of the city to prevent a total blackout.
The outage was so severe it reportedly resulted in flights being diverted to Malaga.
The timing could hardly have been worse.
Hundreds of industry figures had flown in from across Europe for the annual KPMG Gaming eSummit, held aboard the Sunborn, where Trade Minister Nigel Feetham had spent the day pitching Gibraltar as a stable, competitive jurisdiction worth investing in.
His pitch comes at a time when Gibraltar has just absorbed an estimated £40 million hit to its corporate tax revenues thanks to a UK government rise in gambling taxes.
But the Rock went dark before the evening was out.
Feetham had arranged a business dinner for summit guests that evening, but restaurants across the Rock were forced to shut their doors, unable to cook.
Bars packed with residents hoping to watch the opening match of the 2026 World Cup also lost power.
Electricity Authority Minister Gemma Arias Vasquez rushed to North Mole to oversee the recovery, missing the King’s Birthday Parade in Casemates as a result.
The opposition GSD piled in, pointing out that the government had repeatedly assured the public that its power infrastructure programme — costing taxpayers over £100m in total — had made the network resilient against exactly this kind of failure.
Shadow utilities minister Craig Sacarello said the absence of a clear apology to those affected had been ‘almost as remarkable as the outage itself’.
PX Group, which operates the LNG plant, accepted responsibility for the initial failure.
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“This afternoon’s power failure in Gibraltar arose from an apparent failure of equipment which controls the supply of liquid natural gas from the px operated re-gasification plant to the power station,” a spokesperson said.
“We apologise for this failure and are working hard to resolve the problem, to understand the exact cause and to prevent a recurrence.”
The GEA also apologised, saying it was reviewing circumstances to establish the precise cause and ensure any necessary follow-up action was taken.
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