Japan to build biofuel plant in Indonesia

LOS ANGELES, July 25 -- Japan's Nippon Oil Corp. plans to build a 30,000 tonne/year biofuel plant in Indonesia's Jambi province, according to local officials.
Jambi provincial administration spokesman Erwan Malik said a Nippon Oil management team had visited Jambi's Bungo district to meet with farmers and to survey land that could be planted with jatropha and oil palm trees for use as feedstock.
Erwan said his office would cooperate with the Bungo district administration to obtain land for the cultivation of the biodiesel crops.
He said Bungo is the only area that still could be explored for the biofuel project because most other land in Jambi's districts of Batanghari, Muaro Jambi, Sarolangun, Merangin, and Tebo is controlled by local residents and private corporations.
Indonesia's government is behind the development of alternative fuels, and wants biofuel to account for about 10% of the country's energy portfolio by 2010.
The government has already announced one program to build 11 biofuel plants, with production targets of 187 million l. in 2007 and 1.3 billion l. by 2010.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono plans to issue regulations that will speed up the establishment of plantations for biofuel crops, as well as their processing plants.
On July 24 the government also announced that some 6.5 million hectares of idle land would be allocated for investors who were interested in planting biofuel crops such as oil palm, sugarcane, jatropha and cassava.
It specified that some 3 million hectares of the total would be allocated for oil palms, 1.5 million hectares for jatropha, 500,000 hectares for sugarcane, and 1.5 million hectares for cassava.
Contact Eric Watkins at hippalus@yahoo.com.