Here’s some great news from the emerging Biofuel Industry of the Philippines. Cosmo Oil Company of Japan approached Leyte Vice Governor Mimiette Bagulaya and presented to her their plans to setup an Ethanol and Biodiesel refinery in her province. The biofuels generated by the refineries would be sold locally as well as exported to Japan (they have their own biofuel thingy going on there too, Good for them!).
Based on the project proposal, the company’s planned bio-ethanol plant would need 34,000 hectares for a cassava plantation, 36,000 hectares for a sweet potato plantation, 76,000 hectares for a yam plantation, and 40,000 hectares for a sugar cane plantation. The bio-diesel project would require 17,000 hectares to be planted with oil palm and 61,000 hectares for copra production.[source]
The investment would reach $100 Million for the Ethanol Distillery while $50 Million for the Biodiesel refinery.
According to the Vice Governor the officials of Cosmo Oil Ltd said that her province was ideal for growing biocrops. So here’s some interesting data I pulled out of the Philippine Governments Weather Bureau.
According to this, the islands of Samar and Leyte gets about 3.75 weather disturbances a year, while the Philippines gets about 20.5. Mindanao is the only area in the Philippines that is spared from these weather disturbances because of its proximity to the equator, making it ideal for agriculture.
They might want to factor in this little factoid when designing their refinery and port handling facilities. But the news is infact a good one. Investment of that scale would bode well for Leyte. Now its the Japanese who are running after the Americans and Brits in setting up biofuel facilities here. Along with the rest of South East asia, the Philippines is geographically suitable to supply Japan with biofuels. That is because of its proximity which would lower transport costs.
Category: Biodiesel, Bioethanol
