Going biofuel as oil climbs to $50/barrel

Marikina, consistently voted one of the country’s most livable cities, often shows the rest of Metro Manila what public order and service mean. It was first to clear sidewalks with an ordinance penalizing buying from street hawkers. Or fix traffic by simply disciplining jeepney drivers to load and unload only at designated stops. Or rid itself of rabid stray dogs and cats by hunting down the negligent pet owners. Under ex-Mayor Bayani Fernando, now the Metro Manila Authority chief whom underachieving mayors love to hate, Marikina’s frequent flooding was fixed, streets were widened, and fences encroaching on sidewalks were torn down.

Under Mayor Mariles Fernando, Bayani’s wife, Marikina may well show, the rest of the country this time, what foresight means. She is the first local executive to mull with councilors requiring public utility vehicles to use coconut biodiesel. This, to cope with rising fuel costs and air pollution.

Marikina hosted recently a biofuel seminar of the energy department and the US-Agency for International Development. Biodiesel’s attributes were presented to local officials and businessmen. One liter added to a 50-liter full tank (2 percent blend) improved fuel burning, meaning, conserved imported diesel and more engine power. It also declogged pistons and fuel lines, thus promising less maintenance cost. Most of all, because of efficient combustion and biodiesel’s formulation, smoke and toxic emission dropped to well below ceilings of the Clean Air Act. This spells instant clearance for vehicle registration by the Land Transportation Office.

Marikina can’t do it alone, though. It shares the rest of the metropolis’ dirty air. If other cities and provinces go the way of mandatory biofuel use in buses, jeepneys and taxis, the country’s health care spending will drop. Experts compute that individuals and the state spend close to P40 billion a year to cure respiratory diseases and cancers caused by vehicle pollution. A massive switch to biodiesel and alcogas from sugarcane also would save dollars from imported fuels.

President Gloria Arroyo had directed as far back as 2003 a one-percent mix (half-liter of biodiesel for every 50-liter fill-up) on all government diesel vehicles. Compliance has been spotty, because largely unmonitored. Too, biodiesel is hard to come by. There are only three big manufacturers and then some backyard makers. But brisk promotion by the energy office and the Philippine Coconut Authority are encouraging them to hike output and expand distribution. More and more entrepreneurs are looking into alcogas mass-production as well.

Vehicle owners resist biofuels for two reasons. One is unfamiliarity with the technology. Self-bashing Filipinos sneer that biofuel is just a sly way to boost coconut and sugar trade. A quick check on the Internet will show them, however, that Europe is practically begging Asian countries, including Thailand and Indonesia, to sell biodiesel to meet the continent’s emission standards. Coconut is not the only base. Thailand is investing billions of dollars to match Malaysia’s palm oil production for biodiesel. It can also be extracted, one liter per plant per year, from oilseed like tubatuba (jatropha) or tangan-tangan (castor bean) that thrive like weeds on hillsides. The US Department of the Navy recently ordered the use of biodiesel from soybean on all its vehicles. The rest of the US Armed Forces, the National Parks Service, and several state universities also are trying out the bean oil. Ethanol is also being extracted in large amounts from corn for alcogas.

Another resistance to biofuels is cost. A liter of biodiesel sells for P65 to P80. Alcogas from sugarcane is largely experimental, so no market price has yet been set. At any rate, jeepney drivers who live from hand to mouth believe the diesel alternative will only add to their operating cost. But they might as well get used to the price. World crude oil prices may have dipped a week before the G-7 finance ministers’ meeting last Monday and a month before the next OPEC quota talks, but it won’t last for long. Oil industry watchers anticipate crude rates to hit $50 per barrel soon, perhaps even $100 before the end of this year or next. The world will never be the same again with the entry of China and India into the global economy. Together the two nations comprise a third of the world’s population, all hungry for fuel to run their factories and eager to own cars. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, which together mine a fourth of the world’s crude, are already at peak productions. Russia has explored its last potential oilfields in Siberia. Tar pits in Latin America hold promise of new fossil fuel sources, but not enough to sate world thirst. The only big chance lies in Iraq, which holds the second biggest reserve next to Saudi Arabia. But even if war were to end today, the US economy would get first crack at Iraq’s output.

Experts see three ways out of the prospect of $50- or, worse, $100-per barrel oil: improving oil distribution in the short term, but conservation and alternative fuels in the long run.

Fifty-to-hundred-dollar oil would translate to pump prices of P50-P100 per liter in the Philippines. That’s if the peso keeps its value against the dollar, and does not collapse from the weight of economic recession. The way out is in local biofuel sources – coconut, sugarcane, corn and those hillside weeds – no matter what Filipino- and Fernando-bashers blather.

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