Sunday, February 24, 2008 Amid record-high oil prices, Zubiri pitches for biofuels
SEN. Juan Miguel Zubiri yesterday said the country must start producing ethanol and biodiesel now, unless it wants consumers to cope with P100-per-liter gasoline by 2010.
He recalled that when he drafted the Biofuels Act, fuel was trading at $45 per barrel in the world market.
The international price recently hit $101 but fell back last week to $98 a barrel, with pump prices under P50 a liter.
Zubiri pointed out that 98 percent of the country’s fuel supply is imported from the Middle East.
The Biofuels Act of 2006 provides for the mandatory blending of at least five percent bioethanol into vehicle fuel starting this year, rising to 10 percent by 2010.
Zubiri said he intended the law to not only lessen the price of gasoline and diesel but also to make the country less dependent on imported fuel.
He also disputed allegations, in yesterday’s activity, that pushing through with the program would cause food security problems.
“Their basis is the statement of a man from Europe that food production will be affected because the lands intended for rice and corn will now be used for plants that produce biofuels. That will not happen in the Philippines because ethanol, a biofuel, comes from sugarcane. Instead of producing sugar, we will produce ethanol,” Zubiri said.
“The savior of the sugar industry is the biofuels industry. We don’t need to expand because we have existing sugar plantations in Northern Cebu and other parts of the country. All we need is to put up one or two biofuel plants,” he added.
Also, Zubiri said that planting jatropha (tuba-tuba or kasla in Cebuano) for biodiesel will not compete with food production because the plant grows in areas where rice and corn do not survive.
“There are more than five million hectares of non-irrigated or marginal lands in the country where we can plant jatropha,” the senator said.
He witnessed at the University of the Philippines-Los Baños the other day the processing of three kilos of jatropha into a liter of fuel.
“A five-year-old jatropha plantation in 1,603 hectares of land can produce up to 10,000 liters of biodiesel per year. If we can plant jatopha in at least one million hectares, we can already produce up to 40 percent of our diesel needs in the country,” Zubiri added.
In another development, Zubiri said that the Senate will review provisions in the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (Carp) that “hinder” ethanol and bio-diesel production.
Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) 7 Director Rodulfo Inson has said the Carp should be extended after it expires on June 18.
Last week, large landowners headed by Jose Mari Miranda of the Bogo-Medellin Sugar Planters’ Association said they will oppose the Carp’s extension beyond June 18, 2008.
Zubiri, for his part, blamed the Carp for why the country slid to fifth from being the number one exporter of copra, banana and pineapple.
He cited a study that showed the Carp only achieved a 30 percent success rate, with majority of beneficiaries selling their lands shortly after these were given to them. (EOB)
