Eastern Petroleum to construct $30-M ethanol plant

Eastern Petroleum Corp. (EPC), one of the country’s most aggressive small oil players, will start the construction of its $30-million ethanol processing plant next year.

EPC chairman and president Fernando Martinez said they have formalized a joint venture agreement with their partners in the ethanol facility. 

He said the plant, to be located in Sarangani, will have an output capacity of 200,000 liters per day.

He added they expect the construction of the plant to be completed in the first quarter of 2009.

Martinez said they have started planting cassava in a 2,000-hectare plantation which will be used as feedstock for the ethanol plant.

To be able to supply the country’s requirements once the mandated five percent bioethanol blend is implemented in 2009, he said about 12,000 hectares of cassava should be planted.

Martinez said every 6.1 kilos of cassava produce an equivalent of one liter of ethanol.

The EPC executive stressed that cassava remains the best feedstock to produce ethanol. “This is a superior stock introduced in the country.  The yield for cassava could average 50 to 70 percent.”

Last May, EPC signed a memorandum of agreement (MOA) with Guanxi Estates for the development of some 10,000 hectares of land into an ethanol plantation.

Based on the MOA, Martinez said Guanxi and EPC are targeting to produce some 400 million liters of ethanol in 2010 in preparation for the implementation of E-10 blend.

Under the Biofuels Act of 2007, oil companies are mandated to have a five percent blend of ethanol in their gasoline products two years after the signing of the law. 

After four years of the law’s effectivity, the mandated blend will be increased to 10 percent.