|
Brazilian energy giant Petrobras made its first shipment of fuel alcohol this week. The first shipment of anhydrous alcohol left on Monday, July 25, from Rio de Janeiro, on board tanker Nara, and was destined to Venezuela.
The company contract with the government of Venezuela is still being negotiated and forecasts, initially, the monthly shipment of around 25,000 cubic meters of the fuel.
The operation is the result of a memorandum of understanding signed in February, during a visit by Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez.
The objective of the document is cooperation in the implementation of a program for addition of ethanol to petrol. In Venezuela, a new law determines the end of the use of Tetra-ethyl lead in the mixture up to August.
Initially, Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) will add 8% alcohol to petrol in the eastern region of the country. After an adequate period, the fuel may be used in the rest of the country at a 10% mixture.
For the Supply director at Petrobras, Paulo Roberto Costa, "with this first fuel ethanol export to Venezuela, Petrobras, as forecasted in the company Strategic Planning, strengthens its position as an energy company, generates great gains to the environment, enters new markets and sectors, sponsors the growth of Brazil and collaborates to the integration of the countries of South America."
After Venezuela it may be the Chinese turn. Petrobras has already started negotiations with the Chinese government to promote exchange in the fuel alcohol area. There are not yet, however, details regarding the extension of a future accord.
Although fuel alcohol has been used in large scale in Brazil for 30 years, only now have greater opportunities on the foreign market started arising, due to the enactment of the Kyoto Protocol, which forecasts the reduction of pollutant emissions on a global scale, and the increase of oil prices.
With their eye on this potential, Petrobras decided to dive headfirst into the foreign alcohol market. At the beginning of the year, the company announced that it intends to invest US$ 330 million in the next five years to develop the transport infrastructure for the product.
The company hopes to have a capacity for export of 8 billion liters by 2010. Just to have an idea, last year Brazil, which is already the greatest producer and exporter of alcohol, sold 2.4 billion liters on the foreign market.
In Brazil, alcohol is used in engines that are run exclusively on this fuel, in "flex fuel" engines - that operate on gas, alcohol or any mixture of both fuels -, and in vehicles that run only on gas, where the product is used as a catalyst mixed into the oil derivative.
ABr, Anba
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.