A flex fuel car? But where’s the ethanol?

Once again we’re facing record-breaking prices of crude oil, which reached as much as $74 per barrel in the international market last week. So the big question is, are we going to ride out this crisis once again and bite the proverbial bullet until oil prices go down? A more poignant question is, what are we going to do if the oil prices don’t go down anymore?

Last Wednesday, I read The STAR’s front-page report entitled "New Energy-Saving Measures Proposed" where Energy Secretary Raphael Lotilla said that during the joint Cabinet-National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) meeting in Malacañang last week, he was ordered by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to accelerate long-term and short-term measures to cushion the impact of volatile oil prices by looking at alternative sources like coco-diesel and ethanol.

Hellooow! Isn’t this exactly what we wrote in this corner last March 22, that it is about time for the Philippines to follow the lead of Brazil and shift our sugar production to the production of ethanol and use the blessings that God has given this country from our coconut trees to sugar plantations? If only we did this 10 years ago… by now, we would have already declared our independence from foreign oil, which means less dollar outflow and cleaning our polluted cities at the same time.

Mind you, there are other ways to circumvent an oil crisis. God has given us the tools to use, which is no miracle perhaps. The problem lies in the lack of vision or should I say, the lack of brains in our government people who can’t care any less what happens to this country!

For instance, in another newspaper report, an official of the Finance Department was quoted as saying that high oil prices "put a positive spin on things" and that "the government could benefit from rising world oil prices by way of more tax revenues." If this is the mentality of our government people, we’d always be dependent on foreign oil! Shame on these bureaucrats! I would like to believe that they are working for the Arabs or OPEC!

In truth, our government bureaucrats merely react to problems when they are faced with them… nobody, but nobody, has any vision or plans for what the energy picture should be in this country in five to 10 years. We found this out exactly three weeks ago during the full council meeting of the Regional Development Council (RDC-7) in Cebu where a Department of Energy official gave us their plans and programs for the next five years.

Alternative fuel was merely a footnote… a five percent blend for ethanol for the year 2007, increasing to 10 percent by the year 2010! I stood up and questioned this official if he knew that there was an oil crisis going on. He then admitted that the Department of Agriculture and DOE don’t even talk to each other! There’s the whole picture of the future of ethanol or coco-diesel in this government… unless President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo makes a drastic, but permanent decision to move heaven and earth for us to start having a workable ethanol or coco-diesel industry! What is lacking is political will!

In short, we only talk about fuel conservation when oil prices go up, which today is caused by Iran’s wanting to be a nuclear power. But when the prices of oil go down, everyone forgets the idea of fuel conservation. I just hope to God that our government bureaucrats are listening intently to the economic analysts from other countries because from what I’ve been reading, the days of cheap oil is gone forever! Thanks to the rapidly growing economies of China and India whose people now have good-paying jobs and everyone wants to buy a new car. With no new oil fields being found, the world faces a very serious supply and demand problem in oil.

As we wrote before, what we ought to do is to totally focus on our shift to ethanol and the first step is enact a law that would force all public transportation — jeepney, buses, taxicabs, motorized bancas and pumpboats — to use ethanol or coco-diesel fuel. To give incentive to the people in the transportation industry, they should own the fuel stations selling ethanol or coco-diesel… while the sacadas should own the ethanol refineries. Most importantly, the government should not tax these industries for at least 10 years so they can reap the benefits of this shift to a new fuel source.

I’m sure that if we did this, the oil companies would cry foul… and tell us their own plans to use alternative fuels. But let’s not kid ourselves; oil companies only pay lip service to alternative fuels. Their main business is selling oil and the more expensive it is, the better for these companies.

If you want to know what petrodollars have been buying these days? Just watch National Geographic’s Mega Structures program and see how Dubai is building at great construction cost, three or four huge offshore islands that can be seen from high up in space! When these islands are finished, developers will build new cities, resorts, hotels and condominiums for the rich and famous, while the rest of the world grows poorer!

For me, that’s more than enough motivation for our government to push the throttles full-speed ahead on our quest to shift from crude oil to ethanol and the reason is simple enough… the major islands in the Visayas — Cebu, Negros and Leyte — are huge sugar producers. However, because the prices of sugar are high these days, no one in the sugar industry is thinking along the lines of shifting to ethanol production. Everyone is comfy in his own comfort zone, sticking only to the production of molasses.

This is where Brazil made a great decision way back during the 1973 oil crisis… when they decided to go full speed into ethanol production regardless of the world prices of oil in the market. When we were in Brazil in 1997, oil prices were down and ethanol was more expensive. But Brazil never shut down ethanol production and that was a wise decision. Today, Brazilians are using ethanol, not only because it is cheaper, it is also a clean fuel.

So let’s hear it from the Energy Department and I do hope this time, our Cabinet secretaries would start talking to each other… I mean, how can we produce ethanol to make it our principal fuel source if the bureaucrats who run these departments do not even talk to each other?

Meantime, I doff my hat to Ford Philippines because its latest advertisement in The Philippine STAR for the Ford Focus was what I would say… visionary! Yes, buy a Ford Focus and you are ready to use ethanol because this is the very first "flex fuel" vehicle ever sold in this country. That is what you call an ad for the future! So the message to the energy and agriculture departments should be… Ford now has the car that can use ethanol… but where in heaven’s name can we buy ethanol?

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For e-mail responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit Avila’s columns in The Freeman can also be accessed through The Philippine STAR website. He also hosts a weekly talkshow, "Straight from the Sky," shown every Monday, at 8 p.m., only in Metro Cebu on Channel 15 of SkyCable.