Myanmar Eyes Physic Nut Oil As Fuel to Help Solve Oil Crisis
Red Orbit, 18 January 2006
YANGON, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- The Myanmar industry authorities have advocated using physic nut oil as fuel in the country, urging the people to grow such nut plantations on a wide scale to help find a way out of oil crisis.
At a meeting here on Tuesday, Minister of Industry-1 U Aung Thaung highlighted the need for the country to use such biodiesel to avoid spending millions of foreign exchange on fuel in the wake of rising world crude oil prices, the New Light of Myanmar newspaper reported Wednesday.
He said the use of biodiesel as an alternative fuel for petrol, kerosene and diesel would enable rural people to avoid searching fuelwood and help protect forests from depletion and conserve trees.
He added that the utilization of such physic nut oil would also help improve the people's living standard and develop the economic sector.
Noting that the cultivation of an acre (0.405 hectare) of land with 1,200 physic nut plants can produce up to 100 gallons (454.6 liters) of biodiesel, he said the government has made arrangements to put nearly 8,000 hectares under more than 5 million physic nut saplings.
There are two physic nut species in Myanmar -- Castor and Jatropha. Crude oil derived from milled Jatropha can be directly used as fuel only after filtering it with cloth. Experimental use of the Jatropha crude oil in running machines and cars has shown promising results, experts said.
In last November, Myanmar raised its fuel prices by nearly nine times to 1,500 kyats (1.22 U.S. dollars) from the previous 180 kyats (14 U.S. cents) per gallon for petrol and 160 kyats (13 cents) per gallon for diesel.
The government has said that despite the fuel price hike, which is still comparatively lower than the regional and the world market prices, the government still remains subsidized with the fuel supply.
Myanmar produces about 6 million barrels (798,000 tons) of crude oil annually at home, yet it can not meet the demand and the country has to import over 200 million dollars worth of diesel and crude oil per year.
Source: Xinhua News Agency - CEIS
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