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Brazil touts new vegetable-additive fuel

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva holds a sample of H-Bio during an industrial production test at the President Getulio Vargas refinery plant in Araucaria, Brazil, on Tuesday. H-Bio is produced from a mix of vegetable oils and refined petroleum. PHOTO: AFP

Brazil has developed a new diesel fuel mixed with vegetable oils that will sharply reduce its need for imported diesel, the state-run oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA said on Tuesday.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said the new fuel represented a "revolution of tremendous magnitude for the 21st century," when state-run Petrobras presented the fuel in Curitiba, 670km southwest of Rio de Janiero.

"The world has had many wars because of petroleum" Silva said. Brazil "will be the most important country for renewable energy. Nobody will compete with us."

Silva said farmworkers who plant soy and other oil seeds "now will sow petroleum."

He cited Brazil's widespread use of ethanol -- sugarcane alcohol used straight or mixed with gasoline -- and biodiesel, a diesel fuel made solely from vegetable oils.

Petrobras said the fuel, called H-Bio, was developed over 18 months by mixing refinery petroleum with oil from soy, sunflower seeds, cotton and castor beans.

H-Bio fuel is different from bio-diesel, which is also produced with vegetable oils but is blended into regular diesel by fuel distributors, not at the refinery level.

Petrobras predicted that three refineries would produce the new fuel by next year. It declined to reveal expected production but said diesel fuel imports would decline "initially by 250 million liters a year."

Next year, Petrobras plans to use 256 million liters of vegetable oils in the production of H-Bio fuel, officials said. That will replace 15 percent of Petrobras' current diesel imports, estimated at 1.7 billion liters for this year.

Analysts have criticized the government's biodiesel program, saying small-scale farmers will not be able to produce sufficient amounts of biodiesel to meet the government's targets for biodiesel as a percentage of total diesel consumption.
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