Indonesia pledges return to B5 standard by 2010 when sufficient jatropha, palm production comes online

Indonesia said that it would return to a B5 standard by 2010, based on projected yields from new palm and jatropha cultivation. The state oil company, Pertamina, reduced from B5 to B2.5 owing to a 50 percent increase in palm oil prices. Indonesia will overtake Malaysia in 2007 as the largest producer of palm oil and expects to produce 20 million tonnes by 2010, up from 17 million tonnes in 2007.

Recently, 11 biodiesel pumps opened for business on the island of Bali, where a major UN conference on climate change convenes next month.

Earlier this month, Greenpeace released its “Cooking the Climate” report which concluded that forest clearance in Indonesia for palm plantations has made the country the third largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions, behind the United States and China.The study found that Indonesia is losing 2 percent of its tropical forest each year to deforestation, and that the resultant emissions more than offset the gain from switching from fossil fuels to biofuels. Indonesia has six million hectares of palm under cultivation and plans to expand this to 10 million hectares by 2015.

In Indonesia, the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior blocked a 33,000 tonne load of palm oil from leaving the port of Dumai. The Rainbow Warrior was positioned by its crew so close to the oil tanker that the tug boats can’t move it from the dock area.

The cargo of palm oil is headed for India, and Greenpeace is using the exercise to highlight the impact of deforestation on the peat lands of Riau province in Indonesia. Greenpeace believes that the peatland forest store 14.6 billion tonnes of carbon that would be released to the atmosphere if the forest are cleared for oil palm.

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