Officials from the world’s two largest ethanol producers, the United States and Brazil, have been meeting this week to discuss the possibility of a new “energy partnership.”

According to a Washington Post report, U.S. officials said they expect to sign accords within a year that would promote technology-sharing with Brazil and encourage more Latin American neighbors to become biofuel producers and consumers.

“It’s clearly in our interests — Brazil’s and the United States’s — that we expand the global market for biofuels, particularly ethanol, and that it become a global commodity of sorts,” said R. Nicholas Burns, the U.S. undersecretary of state, who led discussions with Brazilian government officials on Wednesday.