Migz urges gov’t to make biofuels program a national security concern

Sen. Juan Miguel Zubiri urged the administration yesterday to prioritize the biofuels program and make it a national security concern in the light of new oil price hikes in the world market.

Zubiri said despite the passage of a law mandating the use of biofuels last year, the government has not fully maximized the country’s biofuels capability to counter the threat of fossil fuel price hikes.

“It should be done now or it would be too late for us to recover from the high cost of transportation both for goods and the people. Our economy is 100 percent dependent on imported fossil fuel, almost four billion liters on gasoline and about six billion liters of diesel, which makes us a hostage of these foreign interests. This limits our growth potential,” Zubiri said in a statement.

“We should be like Brazil, the United States and Thailand with a strong biofuels program that would protect them from fossil fuel dependence. With biofuels, not only will we be fuel independent, we will be fueling the countryside with alternative income, save millions of dollars and produce a fuel that is so much environmentally friendly and with definitely less health risks,” he said.

The country adopted the biofuels law last year. It  requires all gasoline users and oil companies to blend the fuel they would sell with either biodiesel or bioethanol.

Zubiri earlier expressed concern at the slow investments in biofuels, which he partly attributed to the P2-billion initial investment needed to build a biofuel plant.

However, he said the plant would enjoy return of investment from four to five years of operation, especially with five to 10 percent biofuel blend with gasoline required by the biofuels act.