The need is urgent: Pass the bioethanol bill

Strange. Really unbelievable. The entire government seems to be trying to crack its brains to cope with the energy problem, and temporizing on steps intended to assure a long-range solution to our need for alternative fuel sources.

That was the impression I gathered when Agriculture Secretary Domingo Panganiban and Sugar Administrator James Ledesma issued last weekend an appeal for Congress to pass the national bioethanol bills. The first one was that of Sen. Aquilino Pimentel with the Senate, and the other by Rep. Juan Miguel Zubiri (Bukidnon) in the House.

True, there has been a cautious endorsement of the project among sugar producers. But even while the San Carlos bioethanol project is reportedly ready to take off in northern Negros Occidental, the enabling act for the program remains pending in both houses of Congress.

It seems that our lawmakers are more engrossed in the impeachment complaint against President Arroyo and do not have the time to address a more basic issue as the search for alternative energy. Meanwhile, the nation is bombarded daily by calls for energy conservation, bans on the use of government vehicles and reduction of energy through shorter working hours.

And I went out of my way to examine what seems to be the root cause of this temporizing by Congress on the important bill. Ethanol is already a proven fuel mix with gasoline that has become a major industry because it guarantees a sustainable source of energy.

Brazil is already projecting the expansion of its sugarcane areas by about three million hectares. And its projected ethanol production is mind-boggling. The same goes with the United States. The latter gobbles up the oil production of the Middle East, yet it has put up ethanol-producing plants that churn out billions of liters annually.

Investors hesitant

The main point raised by Ledesma and Panganiban was the need to convince investors that they will be protected when they put their capital into ethanol production. In short, there must be iron-clad guarantees that the guidelines are not changed at every whim and caprice of an executive.

In short, while the executive department can come up with the rules and laws on how to go about the whole thing, what is important is the law governing investments. This must be clearly spelled out to entice investors.

A case in point was the co-generation project hatched recently by the First Farmers Milling Company and the British firm Bronzeoak. This could have enabled the sugar mill based in Talisay City (Negros Occidental) to come up with excess power, which it could sell to the National Power Corp. But the APIRA Law put it in a bind.

That was aborted. And the First Farmers, according to president Joe Villanueva, finally decided to go it alone with local funding. But that remains to be addressed. And that was one major project that could have eased the power needs of Negros Occidental.

Co-generation is also a built-in objective of the San Carlos bioethanol plant with Bronzeoak as its foreign partner.

But while it is supposed to start churning out ethanol by the middle of 2007, there are still no iron-clad playing rules.

Admittedly, though, the sugar producers themselves are partly to blame for some of the problems that have delayed their signing of a commitment to supply the ethanol plant its needed sugarcane resources.

Partly, the issue involves whether it should be site-specific, and how much leeway producers will have in committing a portion of their produce to the plant as well as whether the standing cane purchase will alter built-in institutions of the sugar industry.

In short, by wiping out the quedan system, it could reduce producers into contract farmers — a mindset that is difficult to sell to sugar producers who think in terms of millgate prices of their sugar output.

Thus, Panganiban and Ledesma, with the national bioethanol study group, have formulated a strategy that focuses on still underdeveloped areas such as Sarangani and the Caraga region in Mindanao where sugarcane can be planted in thousands of hectares.

Meanwhile, there is talk, confirmed by Negros Occidental Gov. Joseph Marañon, of two possible ethanol plants that may be put up in Bago City in Central Negros and in Dacongcong in the south.

But there was also a more emphatic manifestation that the government has refused to put its eggs in just one basket. This was reflected by Marañon’s pronouncement that the provincial government intends to plant some one million "casla" trees for use as coco-diesel. It was actually Presidential Assistant for Western Visayas Lito Coscolluela who appealed to local government units to cultivate the plant as a viable alternative fuel.

Storm in Tañon Strait

A major controversy has been spawned by the four-stage exploration by two foreign firms in Tañon Strait that separates the islands of Negros and Cebu.

The claim is that the oil exploration being undertaken by the Japan Exploration Corp. and the Forum Energy Corp. do not have a clearance from the Protected Areas Management Council of Central Visayas.

The area has been declared a protected seascape, and exploration cannot be conducted without the approval of the PAMC, said Theresa Mundita Lim, Protected Area and Wildlife Bureau executive director.

The area, declared a protected seascape in 1998, is classified as an "extremely high critical biodiversity area."

But despite leaks of extensive oil deposits purportedly under water twice during the past two weeks, I have gone through Tañon Strait and seen no evidence of work crews taking soundings of the place.

No less than the mayor of Bais City has protested against the exploration.

Oh, well, anyway, if oil is finally found in commercial quantities in the Tañon Strait, that could create a lot of complications for it is the site of dolphins and whales.

In short, we may find ourselves gripped by the same controversy between conservationists and developers on whether the need for oil should supersede the need to preserve marine life in the Tañon Strait.

Filipinas receive MA degrees from CU

I just received the report from New York City that two Filipinas received their Master’s degree in International Affairs from the Columbia University in New York.

The two are Minerva Novero, a journalism graduate of UP Diliman and daughter of former Kabankalan Vice Mayor Rene Novero Sr. and younger sister of Bacolod Vice Mayor Renecito Novero.

Her fellow Master’s degree graduate is Coco Quisumbing, daughter of Supreme Court Associate Justice Leonardo Quisumbing and Dr. Purificacion Alvera.

Novero heads a department of the New York University.