|
 Brazil's plans of introducing ethanol into the global market are bold. And very bold, at that. The aim is to replace 10% of all gasoline consumed on the planet within a 20-year period. A survey conducted by the State University of Campinas (Unicamp) shows that a US$ 20 billion investment in production and logistics is required in order to ensure Brazil's lead in the process.
And two actors will play major roles in the plot: the northeastern Brazilian region, and state-owned oil company Petrobras.
According to the survey by Unicamp, this billion-dollar investment would be split in half between the private sector and the government - counting on the participation of the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) and of Transpetro, the logistics arm of Petrobras.
Brazilian ethanol exports would be catapulted from the current 2.8 billion liters to 200 billion liters, by 2025. The area planted with sugar cane destined for alcohol fuel would need to be increased from 5.6 million up to 30 million hectares. This is where the Northeast comes into play.
The Southeast region will not be able to contribute much to that expansion. "The survey does not include (the southeastern state of) São Paulo, because the state already has a high density of plants," says professor Rogério Cerqueira Leite, who coordinated the Unicamp survey, commissioned by the Brazilian Ministry of Science and Technology.
In addition to the fact mentioned by the researcher, there is also pressure from developed countries for cane planting area not to invade areas of the Amazon forest. An international certificate is required to prove that ethanol production in Brazil does not harm the environment.
The Northeast has been in a disadvantageous position compared with the Southeast in sugarcane productivity, mostly due to the fact that the sugar and alcohol activity is concentrated along the region's coastline, where the uneven topography renders mechanization impossible.
The solution will be to take the production to the interior of the state. The main project along these lines has already been agreed upon by Petrobras and Japanese company Itochu - the leading distributor of fuel in the Japanese market. It is Canal do Sertão ("Dryland Canal"), a 150,000 hectare irrigation work (70% located in the state of Pernambuco, and the remainder in Bahia). The investment is US$ 2 billion.
The president of the Sugar and Alcohol Industry Union in the State of Pernambuco (Sindaçúcar-PE), Renato Cunha, claims that the sector is eager for the project to come to fruition. "But investments are still on demand in logistics and workforce training for the sector, including electrical engineers and other professionals," says Cunha.
According to Plínio Nastari, president of the country's leading ethanol consultancy company, Datagro, the Dryland Canal will also mean the independence of sugar cane producers, whose crops used to depend on the region's climate.
"With this irrigation project, cane production in northeastern Brazil will no longer depend so much on the climate in the region, constantly plagued by long periods of drought. Furthermore, the project encourages alcohol production in the São Francisco River Valley." According to estimates, with irrigation, the region might reach an output of an additional 20 million tons of cane per year.
But other initiatives are already starting to be implemented. Grupo Farias should be the first Brazilian company to export ethanol through Ethyl Tert-Butyl Ether (ETBE). According to Eduardo Farias, president of the group, the company will export around 300 million liters of ethanol per year to Japan.
"Provided that we have the necessary support from the government, we will surely be able to bring an ETBE refinery to the state of Pernambuco," he claimed.
Grupo Farias should also soon establish a partnership with the Chinese state-owned company BBCA Biochemicals, based in the province of Anhui, to establish two new alcohol plants in Brazil. The two plants should be built in the state of Maranhão (NE) and become operational in 2009 or 2010.
The initial production should be 800 million liters of ethanol per crop, with potential to reach 1 billion liters per crop. A total of US$ 200 million will be invested, and each operation will have a processing capacity for five million tons of sugarcane, at a production of 400 to 500 million liters of ethanol per crop.
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.
"Brazil will need to invest US$ 5 billion per year over the next 20 years to meet the expected world demand for Ethanol. The hypothesis was raised in a study by researcher Cortez Luiz of the University of Campinas (Unicamp), which was presented today in a seminar on agribusiness held at the headquarters of BNDES (Brazilian Development Bank).
According to the National Energy Information Center (NEIC) by 2025 1,7 trillion of liters (447 billion gals) of gasoline will be consumed yearly. If 10% of this total is substituted with Ethanol, this will require 204 billion liters (53.6 billion gals) of Ethanol per year. If Brazil were to meet this demand, it would require 615 new plants, which would total US$ 31 billion in exports per year and create 5.3 million jobs"
NOW lets do some basic maths :
5,3 millions jobs producing US$ 31 billion....EQUALS TO AROUND.....US$ 6000.- per job...per year !
RIGHT OR NOT ????????
Ohhhhhh but these US$ 6000.- annual GROSS REVENUE per worker, doesnt include the input costs, such as machinery, trucks, pipeline, mills, acquiring land prices, administration costs, social costs, interests...etc etc...... !!!!!
And doesntt neither include the transportation,infrastructure, port costs.
End results ?
By 2025 these 5,3 millions NEW workers should earn around US$ 200.- per month...AT BEST......to generate US$ 31 billion in exports !!!!!!!!
Brazil has truly a great future....in more....POVERTY...for milions and millions of its citizens !!!!!!!!
Viva Brazil, Viva Bin Lula and his 4000 thieves, Viva Ethanol the only product GUARANTEING more poverty by 2025....in Brazil !!!!
And as you can see....it is not US$ 20 billion that would be needed by 2025 as today above article mentions, but US$ 5 billion per year for the next 20 years....or US$ 100 billion.
Whatever way you look at it, whatever original Brazilian official source it comes from, one thing is sure, it is that no one in Brazil knows how to use a basic spread sheet...to do some forward predictions.
Brazilians just goof, goof, goof, cheat, and lie !
They dont even know what they are talking about.
They cant even realize that their equations are full of bugs, contradictions and errors !