Zubiri: Oil firms funding drive vs biofuels
By Gil C. Cabacungan Jr., TJ Burgonio, Abigail L. Ho
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 02:02:00 01/16/2008
Filed Under: Alternative energy, Oil & Gas - Downstream activities, Congress, Agriculture, Food
MANILA, Philippines -- Sen. Juan Miguel Zubiri Tuesday accused oil companies of financing a campaign against the Arroyo administration’s program to develop biofuels, specifically those made from jatropha and ethanol.
“Oil companies are afraid (of biofuels) because it is in direct competition with their product. That is why they are trying to block this,” he said at a press conference.
Zubiri, author of the Biofuels Act in the House of Representatives, said that even during the deliberations in Congress on the bills on biofuels, the oil firms had declared that they would lobby against them if they became law.
He came up with the accusation after Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago sought more government oversight powers over biofuel development, which she said could adversely affect the country’s ability to produce its own food.
Zubiri said the oil companies, including Petron Corp. which is 40-percent owned by the government, had launched a “lobby fund” to block the compulsory use of biodiesel and bioethanol by transport vehicles.
Another government official defended the biofuel program, but a professor at the University of the Philippines-Los Baños welcomed moves in Congress to evaluate the program.
“We’re already running out of food, and yet we still want to produce fuel for vehicles. The issue is now between food and fuel. Do we want to go hungry or produce more fuel for vehicles?” professor Teodoro Mendoza said in an interview by phone.
Renato Velasco, chair of Philippine National Oil Co.-Alternative Fuels Corp. (PNOC-AFC), said, however, that the program to develop the biofuels sector would not adversely affect the country’s ability to produce food.
This is because jatropha, a plant from which biodiesel can be produced, does not require the same quality of land as that on which food crops are being grown, according to Velasco.
Santiago called for a slowdown in the massive cultivation of crops for biofuel production, which she feared would reduce the hectarage devoted to food production.
She said she agreed with Dr. Martmut Michel, the 1998 Nobel laureate for chemistry, who said that biofuel development would be counterproductive because it would produce little energy compared with renewable sources of energy like the wind.
“Some politicians have over-hyped the Biofuels Act to burnish their image, thus misleading the public,” she said on Monday.
Debate challenge
Apparently feeling alluded to, Zubiri challenged Santiago, the author of the Biofuels Act in the Senate, to a debate on the pros and cons of biofuels.
“I cannot survive a debate with Miriam when it comes to constitutional and legal issues. But I know I can survive a debate with Miriam on agriculture and the environment. This is my passion. They are telling me I used it to boost my popularity, but so did Al Gore and nobody is hitting him. They gave him a Nobel Peace Prize for his advocacy and he is pushing for biodiesel,” he said.
Zubiri said that in his first privilege speech this year he urged his colleagues in the Senate to interpellate him. “Let’s get into a higher [plane of] debate on this,” he said.
He said Michel was probably being used by the giant oil companies. “He’s Dutch and Shell is based in the Netherlands,” the senator said.
Zubiri said he was promoting the use of biofuels because he wanted farmers to have an alternative use for sugar and jatropha to boost their income.
The Biofuels Act signed in January last year mandates a biodiesel and bioethanol blend in gasoline to reduce the country’s dependence on imported fossil fuels.
The law carries penalties against those that would derail the program such as imprisonment of up to five years and fines of up to P5 million, according to Zubiri.
Pressure on water supply
In his paper titled “Are biofuels good for humanity?”, Mendoza said biofuel production would adversely affect not only food security but the water supply in the country.
Mendoza, a professor of crop science, said agricultural lands had been cultivated to produce the current supply of food, and a “future expansion” would encroach on “fragile and less favorable agro-environments.”
“Biofuel production will inevitably use additional lands over and above the existing agricultural lands that are devoted to food crop production. The Philippines is already a net food importing country,” he wrote in his paper, which was published in the December 2007 issue of the Philippine Journal of Crop Science.
“Where shall we grow biofuel crops without threatening further the country’s food security?” he said.
On top of this, Mendoza said biofuel production would turn water scarcity into “crisis proportions.”
Voluminous liquid waste
He pointed out that feedstock production entailed huge amounts of water that would put “severe pressure on water allocations for food” or for biofuel crop production.
Mendoza added that biofuel processing would produce voluminous liquid wastes that would pollute both surface and ground water, reducing the supply of clean and potable water.
“Providing enough water for the people and for corn ethanol factories as well as other industries poses difficulties even without a drought,” he said. “What more if we produce biofuel?”
Mendoza said he was willing to appear as a resource person at hearings in the Senate or the House to “share whatever knowledge I have on biofuels.”
Velasco said there was no need to convert forested areas to jatropha plantations, unlike in the case of other biofuel feed stocks such as palm.
He said the government, through its main biofuel proponent, the PNOC-AFC, was not enticing landowners to cut down trees in favor of jatropha farming.
“In the first place, jatropha can grow anywhere in the Philippines, even on idle and marginal lands. That is why jatropha is being rediscovered as the new pin-up boy of alternative energy proponents,” he said in a statement.
AIM group for biofuels
Rafael Diaz Jr., managing director of the Asian Institute of Petroleum Studies Inc., also questioned Michel’s statement, saying the Nobel laureate was an expert on photosynthesis but not on the petroleum function of biofuels.
In a letter to National Biofuels Board Chair Ramon Santos, Diaz said there were many other factors to consider in biofuel production and not just the actual energy stored in plants.
Western context
He said Michel’s statement was made in the context of Western conditions.
Unlike crops such as corn and sugar beet for ethanol, and rapeseed, sunflower and soybean for biodiesel -- which are being used as feed stocks in the United States and Europe, coconut and jatropha are not once-a-year crops that involve land preparation, planting, fertilization and harvesting each time, according to Diaz.
“Coconut fruit is harvested and the tree bears fruit again and again. No plant is destroyed and replanted. The same is true for palm. This is also true for jatropha. Jatropha seeds are harvested much like coffee beans. No plant is destroyed and replanted,” Diaz said.
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