SPAIN’S ABENGOA STILL MULLING BIOFUEL PLANT STOPPAGE
02.28.07 - Leído 265 veces. Enviar esta notaJulia Hayley
Spanish energy and engineering firm Abengoa has not yet decided whether to suspend production at its biggest bioethanol plant, Financial Director Amando Sanchez Falcon told journalists on Tuesday
MADRID, Spain; February 28, 2007.- “The decision has not yet been taken,” he said. “If it is best to stop, we will.”
Traders and industry sources said last week that high grain prices had made the plant unprofitable. Abengoa produces ethanol from barley at its Salamanca plant in central Spain, and exports all its production.
It has two other ethanol plants in Spain which supply the national market.
The Salamanca plant, which Abengoa built in partnership with food group Ebro Puleva opened only last year and switched from wheat to barley as its raw material in December.
It uses 50,000 tonnes of grain a month Abengoa has already bought enough grain to cover the plant’s production until the end of April, Sanchez Falcon said.
The logistics of importing at least some of the raw material and exporting the end product add to the costs of the raw material. The plant’s capacity is 200 million litres of ethanol a year.
“Salamanca was intended to produce for the Spanish market, for direct blending,” Sanchez Falcon said.
To date, the output from Abengoa’s two smaller Spanish plants are enough to supply the domestic market.
Fuel distributor CLH, which handles at least 80 percent of the country’s transport fuel, says is already blending 3 percent ethanol — in the form of ETBE — in all the gasoline it transports.
Oil companies can blend up to 3 percent bioethanol with gasoline without having to label it diffently.
Only 30 percent of Spanish cars use gasoline, which can be mixed with plant-based ethanol to reduce carbon emissions. The other 70 percent of vehicles use diesel, which can be blended with biodiesel made from oilseeds.
Mandatory Blending
Abengoa said the bioethanol market needed the government to impose mandatory blending. The government has said it is considering this, but so far has talked about a mandatory 2 percent biofuel content, not the 5.75 percent target the European Union has set for 2010.
Spain so far produces little biodiesel, but a series of big plants are due to start up in 2008 and 2009.
Industry Minister Joan Clos said earlier on Tuesday that he was firmly committed to extending the use of biofuels.
Spain is struggling to curb the rapid growth of CO2 emissions from transport as part of its efforts to rein in greenhouse gases and meet its goal under the Kyoto protocol on global warming.
(Reuters)
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