The Hindu : Ethanol-blended petrol in 9 States, 4 UTs

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Feb 02, 2003

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Ethanol-blended petrol in 9 States, 4 UTs

By Our Special Correspondent

BANGALORE FEB. 1. The Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas, Ram Naik, has said that in view of supply constraints from the sugar industry, the Centre has decided to supply five per cent of ethanol-blended petrol in nine States and four Union Territories (UTs) from January 1, 2003 and the areas of these States and UTs would supply ethanol-blended petrol by June 30, 2003.

Delivering the inaugural address at the seminar on "national policy on non-edible vegetable oils as bio-fuels'' here, Mr. Naik said the Centre had issued a notification mandating supply of ethanol-blended petrol in nine States — Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh (U.P.) and four UTs of Chandigarh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu and Pondicherry. As the current total consumption of gasoline in these States and UTs was about 4.6 million tonnes a year, the requirement of ethanol at five per cent blend ration worked out to 350 million litres.

Mr. Naik said ethanol was a renewable source of energy and it was a welcome change that today bio-fuels were being seriously viewed from the perspective of depleting fossil fuel resources, environmental health, energy security, agrarian economy and new avenues of gainful employment. Six technical committees and four study groups had examined the issue of blending ethanol with petrol since 1977. However, it gained momentum only in 2000 when the Ministry decided to take up pilot projects at three locations in the sugar-producing States of Maharashtra and U.P. Under these projects, ethanol-blended petrol successfully supplied through 300 retail outlets. Six more projects were commissioned in Andhra Pradesh, Punjab and Uttat Pradesh last year. Research and Development (R&D) studies were also undertaken on use of the commodity in automobiles.

In the next phase, supply of ethanol-blended petrol would be extended to the whole country. He said that efforts would be made to increase the percentage of ethanol mixture in petrol to 10 per cent.

Noting that 80 per cent of fuels consumed in the country constituted diesel, he said the Centre had decided to supply ethanol-blended diesel in the third phase and Rs. 4 crores had been sanctioned for R&D. A MoU with Brazil had been signed in April last year to facilitate transfer of technology.

In the advanced countries bio-diesel was being extracted from saffola, sunflower and soyabean, which were substantially edible in India. But, India had vast resource of non-edible and wild seeds from which oil could be extracted to develop bio-diesel.

Experiments had shown that bio-diesel produced from non-edible oil seeds could be used in existing design of diesel vehicles without any modification. The Ministry had decided to take up field trials through pilot projects. ``The oil sector is looking for indigenous sources to reduce its dependence on imported crude oil and there can be no better source than ethanol and bio-diesel in our agriculture dominated economy.''

Unlike ethanol, the production and collection of seeds was not an easy task to generate bio-fuel.

A national policy on bio-fuels should be evolved with the participation of stakeholders like farmers, cooperatives, NGOs, panchayat bodies, institutions and State Governments.

Oil price hike

Mr. Naik said oil price had been increasing in these months due to three major reasons — anticipation of war against Iraq; strike by oil workers in oil producing countries, such as Venezuela; and winter. In the winter, western countries use more petrol products. The crude oil price had gone up from $ 22 per barrel to $ 32 in the last few months. India imported 70 per cent of its crude oil requirements at a cost of Rs. 78,000 crores in 2001-02.

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