Reuters Summit - US Seen Importing Ethanol, But Tariff Uncertain US: April 7, 2008 WASHINGTON - The United States will need to import more sugarcane-based ethanol to meet renewable energy mandates, a top US official said, but he stopped short of recommending that a controversial ethanol tariff be lifted. "If our goal is to reduce hydrocarbon usage and to increase ethanol usage, that is going to happen through cane-based production," Tom Shannon, the top US official for Latin America, said in the Reuters Latin America Investment Summit on Friday.
Philippines To Import Ethanol From Brazil, Thailand INDIA: April 3, 2008 MUMBAI - The Philippines plans to import about 170 million litres of ethanol from Brazil and Thailand in 2009, Archie Amarra, executive director of Philippines Sugar Millers Association Inc, said on Wednesday. The Philippine government had passed a biofuel act in 2007 that made it mandatory to mix 5 percent of ethanol in gasoline from February 2009, he said. "It will translate into 200 million litres of ethanol a year," Amarra told Reuters on the sidelines of a sugar conference in Mumbai.
Soyabean and wheat prices continued falling yesterday as traders chewed over the implications of the dramatic shifts in agricultural production likely across the US farming industry this year. Both soyabeans and wheat are on course for a large increase in farmland devoted to their production, while last year's rush by US farmers into corn to feed the requirements of the ethanol industry will be partially reversed.
Responding enthusiastically to the world agrofuel frenzy, the Indian government has promised a flurry of initiatives to encourage the large-scale planting of agrofuel crops, particularly jatropha. Without waiting for the government support to be spelt out, corporations are already moving in, taking over resources that have traditionally been used by rural communities. As a result, local people will find it harder to satisfy their food and fuel needs. Once again, it is the rural poor who will bear the cost of the agrofuel boom, while reaping few of the benefits. April 2008
Firms seek greener ethanol from wood chips and agricultural waste. Scientists and engineers are working on dozens of possible biofuel-processing routes, reports Charles Wyman, a chemical engineer at the University of California, Riverside, who is a founder of Mascoma Corporation in Cambridge, Mass., a leading developer of cellulosic ethanol processes.
US farmers have rarely been so spoiled for choice when it comes to choosing which crops to plant. Corn, wheat, soyabean, oats, rice, barley, hay, canola and sunflower prices are all at or near record levels. Which crops farmers will plant this year should become clearer on Monday when the US Department of Agriculture publishes its Prospective Plantings report, based on a survey of 86,000 farm operators in the first two weeks of March.
Brazil, the world's largest ethanol producer, has thrown open its doors to investment by Indian companies in sugarcane farming, extracting ethanol and exporting it back home for mixing in petrol.
Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Murli Deora on Wednesday announced that the percentage of ethanol blending in fuel would be raised to 10 per cent from the present 5 per cent even as the world's l
Royal Dutch Shell, Europe's biggest oil company, is working on a process to turn sugars into a synthetic petrol, rather than ethanol, with the aim of moving to a commercial demonstration plant in two years' time. The company yesterday announced a joint venture with Virent, a US biotech business based in Wisconsin, saying results from research over the past year had been better than expected in terms of costs and yields.
