Senator Juan Miguel Zubiri Saturday called on oil firms to moderate their greed amid the impending increase in oil prices to P60 a liter, as he stressed his plan to make Negros the biofuels center of the Philippines.

“I want other provinces to see that Negros is leading the way in alternative fuels,” Zubiri, who was in the province for the annual Panaad sa Negros Festival in Bacolod City, said.

Under the road map for the Philippines Biofuels Program safeguards will be provided to protect the country’s food security programs, Zubiri also assured.

Zubiri  announced that the acting head of the National Biofuels Board is Sugar Regulatory Administrator Rafael “Lito” Coscolluela, a former governor of Negros Occidental, although his official appointment by the President is being awaited.

Zubiri had earlier asked President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to replace NBB Executive Director Ramon Santos.

But Coscolluela yesterday said the biofuels program is being discussed with the President, Energy Secretary Angelo Reyes and Santos. We are currently defining problems, no formal structure in the program management has been reached until the discussions on the matter are over, from there we will decide what is to be done, he said.

Zubiri said, “The United Nations is barking up the wrong tree by quickly attacking biofuels for escalating food prices. They should, instead, focus their attacks on the greed and selfish motives of oil-producing nations and speculators who continue to hoard petroleum products and raise their prices at the expense of the world”.

The latest record-breaking price of $120 per barrel of crude oil that is expected to roughly translate to P60-65 per liter of fuel, almost thrice the amount we were paying two years ago, is “the crime against humanity,” the senator said.

Such high prices have forced nations to produce biofuels to survive into the future by becoming energy-independent, he said.

That is why the Philippines, he said, is not giving up on the program, too.

Zubiri said he wants Negros to be the Brazilian model for production of EH 5, an 85 percent ethanol blend from sugar that could bring down the cost of fuel to P31 to 32 per liter.

He said it is easy to convert vehicles to use EH 5, gasoline tanks just have to be changed to plastic or fiber glass because steal tanks are corrosive.

The production of biofuels will save the sugar industry from collapse when tariffs on imported sugar are lifted under the ASEAN Free Trade Agreement, he also said.

“We must protect the sugar industry and make it in tune with the times. Biofuels will give alternative value to cane,” he said.

The Philippines Biofuels Program is unique in the sense that we have the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of other countries who rushed to craft their own biofuels programs, he said.

Under the road map for the Philippines Biofuels Program, among the safeguards recommended is a ban on the planting of biofuel feedstocks in all irrigated and highly-productive arable lands, he said.

It is also recommended that production of bioethanol gasoline replacement be limited to sugar-producing districts and utilizing only excess production, he said. The country has an excess sugar production of almost 300,000 tons that will yield roughly 400 million liters of bioethanol, he said.

The program will also utilize the almost 4 million hectares of idle cogonal and denuded mountain lands to plant jatropha or even malunggay. These lands are not suitable for rice and corn due to the marginal slope of the land, he said.

A ban on the use of corn, wheat, soybean, rapeseed and other food crops for the biofuels program has also been recommended, he said.*CPG

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