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Jatoil calls on Australia to back jatropha

July 7, 2008

In Australia, the highly-anticipated Garnault climate change report was released, outlining urgent steps required to meet climate change targets. The report prompted the Australian jatropha developer Jatoil to call on the Australian government to permit large-scale cultivation of jatropha in Australia. The plant has been considered an invasive species and its import and cultivation have not been encouraged. Jatoil has partnered with GreenEnergy Biofuels to develop jatropha farms in Vietnam, and has marketing agreements in place with Norway’s Perennial Bioenergy and with biodiesel refiner Imperium Renewables.

Jatropha background

• Integrated Biodiesel Industries said that it has acquired a 10 percent stake in Ireland’s South Cone Agriculture, a developer of jatropha plantations. South Cone said that it would use the funds from the investment to develop plantations in Angola, Brazil and Argentina, and will initialize harvesting later this year it its first plantations. IBI, which will have a total production capacity of 135,000 tonnes by the end of 2008 from its plants in Argentina, said that it sought to develop alternative feedstocks to soy oil.

• In Zambia, the Omnia group will invest $3 million in jatropha research, saying that the imperative to develop alternative fuels is stronger in landlocked Zambia than neighboring South Africa, and said that the company hopes to understand as much as possible about rh nutrients required by jatropha so that it can develop and sell better fertilizers if cultivation of jatropha continues to increase in Southern Africa.

• In Malawi, the government said that the country is on track to commence biodiesel production in 2009 from several jatropha projects underway throughout the country. The government also said that the Department of Science and Technology and Lilongwe Technical College are developing engine modifications that will allow conversion of cars to E100 sugarcane ethanol, with initial tests scheduled to be complete by mid-2009.

• The Chinese and Italian governments have initiated a feasibility study for jatropha biodiesel at Sichuan University. The project received $650,000 in support from Italy. The project is the third signed by Italy and China, promising cooperation in biofuels research since mid-April. The others covered industrial waste oil-based biodiesel in Hubei Province, and thin-film solar cells in Shanghai.

• In England, De-Ord Fuel opened a new 100,000 GPY biodiesel facility in Mansfield that will use jatropha and waste vegetable oil as feedstocks. The company will distribute fuel to bus and truck fleets. The $550,000 project is one of the first of a wave of micro-facilities that will utilize sustainable feedstocks in Europe.

• Recently D1 Oils officially announced that it would close its rapeseed oil biodiesel plant in Teesside and lay off 40 workers until it could sell the plant. The company said that it would close plants in Middlesbrough and Merseyside that are unable to compete with US imports and concentrate on development of its 500,000 acres of jatropha in Africa and India. The jatropha is planted in partnership with BP, and will begin yielding jatropha oil later this year with full scale production by 2011

• In Myanmar, “Biofuel by Decree: Unmasking Burma’s bio-energy fiasco,” was released by the Ethnic Community Development Forum, detailing the use of forced labor and land confiscation to plant 8 million acres with jatropha to provide a solution to Myanmar’s fuel crisis. The report, based on government documents, media reports, and 131 interviews conducted in Myanmar between November 2006 and April 2008. The report said that individuals “have been fined, beaten, and arrested for not participating.” The plan has been plagued with mismanagement by the army soldiers supervising the work. “The soldiers carry guns. They don’t know anything about agriculture,” said a farmer in the report.

• The first national jatropha crops were ready for harvest this month, with up to 7 million acres planted by small farmers, after a national directive in 2006 that all farmers with more than 1 acre of land had to plant a minimum of 200 jatropha seeds to establish a hedge around their landholdings. The ruling junta developed the plan in light of soaring oil import costs, and the biggest anti-junta protests since the 1980s which erupted last year over cuts in diesel subsidies

• In California, Allegro Biodiesel has commenced processing of jatropha oil into biodiesel on a test basis.

• China’s largest state oil company, Sinopec, said it will invest $5 billion in jatropha and palm plantations in Indonesia.

• In the United Arab Emirates, the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi announced an $15 billion investment project in renewables, managed by Masdar. Masdar’s major initiative in bio-fuels is focused on jatropha and other arid climate crops.

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    Written by Jim Lane · Filed Under Policy 

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