Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva apparently put their heads together and worked out a compromise on ethanol at this week’s first-ever South American Energy Summit.
Bloomberg reports that South America’s 11 nations have agreed to promote biofuels production to supplement oil output in the region.
According to the story, leaders at the Summit, “agreed to create a regional alliance, to be known as the South American Union, as well as an energy council to regulate and promote cooperation in the sector.”
The summit leaders debated for an entire day over what media reports called an “impasse over conflicting views on the issue by Venezuela and Brazil.” However, Chavez denied that, saying he believes “ethanol is a valid strategy as long as it doesn’t affect food production.”
Venezuela is the world’s eighth-largest exporter of crude while Brazil is the world’s largest exporter of ethanol.
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As we close in on income tax deadline day, biodiesel advocates are blasting the U.S. Internal Revenue Service for allowing petroleum producers to cash in on the same dollar-a-gallon tax credit orginally set up to help the fledgling biodiesel industry.
“Certain powerful oil companies have managed to get the government to expand the definition of a separate provision that was added into the biodiesel tax credit law late in the legislative process,” said Joe Jobe, CEO of the National Biodiesel Board (NBB). “It’s our belief that this credit was developed to help a specific emerging technology, and not to further subsidize existing petroleum refineries.”
“You have to make things cool, you have to make things sexy and cutting edge,” he said. “And so we don’t have to take away the cars from the people, the SUVs, the Hummers, and the muscle cars. No. That formula is a formula for failure. Instead, what we have to do is make those muscle cars and those SUVs and those Hummers more environmentally muscular. That is what we have to do. This is why now one of my Hummers runs on biofuel, and the other one of my Hummers runs on hydrogen fuel.”
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A Dodge Viper fueled with 85 percent ethanol set a world speed record when it hit 189 mph last week on the runway at the Mojave Air & Space Port.
Company president Nile Ramsbottom said the company looked at Emporia because of its location and an ongoing partnership with soybean processor Bunge North America.