Agência Brasil*
Rio de Janeiro – Starting in July, all the diesel oil sold by Petrobras Distribuidora (BR) will include in its composition 2% biodiesel. According to the president at BR, Maria das Graças Foster, up to the end of May, five thousand service stations under the flag and another 3,350 large company clients in all states of the country will already be receiving B2 biodiesel (i.e.: a mixture of 2% of vegetable oil into conventional diesel – derived from petroleum).
So the target may be reached, Petrobras Distribuidora invested R$ 35 million (US$ 17.3 million at current exchange rates) in operational and logistics infrastructure, as a way to adequate its base and terminal network. Compulsory addition of biodiesel to diesel oil had been forecasted for January 2008.
"Due to the ANP (National Petroleum Agency) legislation – it had only been forecasted for 2008 – this anticipation was a challenge, it was necessary to convince clients of the viability of the BR strategy. We completed a year of work planning the placement of biodiesel on the Brazilian market and ended last week with 4,550 retailers selling diesel with vegetable diesel added to it, and up to the end of the month we will certainly have 5,000 service stations trading B2," said Maria das Graças.
The BR information shows that in April 2006, just two company bases (Belém and Fortaleza – respectively in the North and Northeast of Brazil) operated with biodiesel, with a turnover of 90,000 litres of B2 biodiesel a month (of a total of 915 million litres/month of all kinds of diesel – interior, metropolitan, maritime – traded by the company).
"Currently, sales of B2 biodiesel total 680 million litres per month at 86% of the operational installations, which means the movement of 40,000 tanker lorries per month. The percentage of B2 in total company diesel sales rose from under 1% to around 57% in the period," according to the company, which is a subsidiary of Brazilian oil giant Petrobras.
Up to the end of the month, the terminals located in the cities of São Paulo (Tespa), Brasília (Tebras), Duque de Caxias (Teduc), Betim (Tebet), Mataripe (Temat), Fortaleza (Tefor), Belém (Telem), São Luís (Telis), Oriximiná (Barix), Rio Branco (Barib), Caracaraí (Barac), Macapá (Armap), Belo Monte (Bamon) and Marabá (Bamab) will only be selling B2 biodiesel.
*Translated by Mark Ament
