Brazilian Petroleum fully intervenes in the production and export of ethanol fuel

The president of Petrobras's ethanol business, Oriva, revealed on the 15th in Sao Paulo, the largest city in Brazil that Brazil’s oil company will start exporting ethanol to the United States from this year through Bush’s visit to Brazil’s “East Wind”. This move marks the full involvement of Petrobras in the production, transportation and export of ethanol fuel.
There is a lot of relationship with ethanol fuel. As a state-owned company in Brazil, Petrobras' research and development work in the field of ethanol fuel has continued for more than 30 years. Since the 1970s, Petrobras has begun to support the Brazilian government's national ethanol plan. Petrobras has oil pipelines all over the country, effectively helping the transportation of ethanol and oil throughout the country. In addition, Petrobras uses its own technology to help Brazil realize the idea of ​​adding ethanol to gasoline.
Petrobras has successively tested the practice of adding 10%, 15%, 20% and 25% of ethanol to gasoline. Both have achieved success and are used in the company’s fleet of transport and ships. Brazil currently requires 23% ethanol to be added to gasoline sold nationwide.
Although Petrobras does not have a stake in the main ethanol fuel plant in Brazil, it is responsible for the transportation and storage of ethanol fuel. Therefore, in the past few years, Petrobras has built a number of ethanol fuel storage sites near its production plants, and its total storage capacity will soon exceed 1 billion liters.
Development of Overseas Markets Brazilian oil companies have actively developed overseas markets in recent years. Its first overseas market is Japan. At the end of 2005, Petrobras and a Japanese state-owned company jointly established BJE in Japan, each with a 50% stake. BJE will be responsible for importing ethanol produced in Brazil. In addition to its use as an energy source, it will also use Brazilian ethanol for medicine and brewing.
At the same time, Petrobras will also take measures in Brazil to ensure the supply of ethanol to the Japanese market. The company recently signed a memorandum with Japan’s Mitsui Banking, which announced that it will invest US$8 billion from Japan and build 40 ethanol plants across Brazil.
Petrobras currently supplies ethanol to Venezuela and will soon start supplying supplies to Nigeria. This year, Petrobras plans to achieve 850 million liters of ethanol exports. By 2011, the company plans to achieve its goal of exporting 3.5 billion liters of ethanol annually.
Biodiesel and HBIO plans Petrobras currently has biodiesel in the cities of Kandeas (Bahia), Montescala (Mato Grosso) and Quisda (S Aras) The main raw material for the production plant is vegetable oil and animal fat. Each factory has an annual production capacity of up to 5,700 liters of biodiesel. From the end of 2008, these plants will hopefully meet the needs of the northeastern region of Brazil.
Petrobras is also committed to developing raw materials for biodiesel and helping average farmers increase their income. For this reason, Petrobras will increase its research on the extraction of biodiesel from crops such as castor beans and cottonseeds. In the future, it will also increase research on species such as sunflowers, nuts, and jatropha species. In addition, Petrobras will establish two new biodiesel plants in the southern region, each with an annual production capacity of 100,000 tons of biodiesel.
Petrobras has already started the HBIO program. The purpose of the program is to mix vegetable oil directly into mineral oil at a smelter, so that the smelted diesel will be of better quality than the one purified from oil alone.
Petrobras emphasized that this plan is the first in the world and is currently in the testing phase. It is expected that it will be officially launched by the end of 2007.

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