In Washington, Representative Collin Peterson, Chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, led fellow members of the Biofuels Caucus in urging Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to direct funding from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act to support the biofuels industry. Biofuels plants across the nation have idled production as stay at home orders reduce […]
In Argentina, La Nación newspaper reports that biodiesel exports reached 1.029 million metric tons in 2019 with nearly all of it going to Europe, yet the country’s has a European export quota of 1.2 million tons it wasn’t able to completely fill due to low petroleum prices that have weighed on demand for biodiesel blendstock, […]
In Brazil, Reuters reports that despite the economic and demand disaster that the global ethanol industry is facing, especially Brazil, one of the country’s soy crushers, CJ Selecta, is still planning to open its 12-million-liter ethanol production facility in Minas Gerais. Most of the ethanol will be destined for use at the company’s soy-crushing facility […]
In Washington, Bloomberg reports that President Trump has told the Secretary of Agriculture to bailout the agriculture industry, details of which are expected to be announced this week. Senators and House members from both sides of the aisle have been calling for financing across the agricultural supply chain to help battle losses as a result […]
In the UAE, Neutral Fuels has become the first biofuel company to successfully attain certification under the UAE’s new Emirates Authority for Standardization and Metrology (ESMA) biodiesel quality standard. The ESMA certification indicates that Neutral Fuels and its products and services satisfy the quality standards required by UAE laws, procedures and codes of conduct. ESMA […]
In Brazil, Renewables Now reports that the national fuel agency ANP has rescheduled the second phase of its most recent biodiesel auction to April 15 following a meeting held last Friday between the agency, producers and the energy ministry following concerns about COVID-19. Questions had been raised by industry about how much blending should be […]
In Missouri, CoverCress Inc. (formerly Arvegenix Inc.) has closed a $5 million follow-on equity investment round to continue its development of a new winter oilseed crop named CoverCress®. This crop enables farmers in the southern half of the Midwest to grow three crops each two years, getting more from their existing farmland and equipment. CoverCress® […]
In Brazil, Reuters reports that the agriculture minister says a bailout program for the country’s ethanol industry will be announced this week which will include dropping the Pis/Cofins levy on ethanol for a yet-to-be-determined period while the Cide tax on gasoline will also be increased in an effort to make ethanol more attractive to the […]
In Washington, D.C., the RFA reports that EIA released its Weekly Petroleum Status Report for the week ending April 3, which reflected the deepening impact on the ethanol industry from the social-distancing and stay-at-home restrictions associated with COVID-19. Ethanol production plunged 20.0%, or 168,000 barrels per day (b/d), to 672,000 b/d—the lowest level since the […]
In Minnesota, Calyxt, Inc., a plant-based technology company, licensed a new method to help increase plant gene editing efficiency from the University of Minnesota. The method has the potential to reduce the time needed to edit plants from approximately one year to several months. This new technology could help Calyxt bring consumer-desired products, like better […]
