Originally published February 15 2006
Hike in diesel prices spurs fuel innovation in Vanuatu and Samoa
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Coconut oil is being used in both Vanuatu and Samoa to dilute diesel, and the testing of alternative fuels will likely continue as diesel prices remain high.
Unelco Vanuatu is diluting diesel for its biggest generator with 5 percent coconut oil, while Electric Power in Samoa is running a test using blends with as much as 20 percent.
Tony Deamer, Vanuatu's biggest retailer of coconut-kerosene motor fuel, is selling his 80 percent blend "Island Fuel" to truck drivers at prices 14 percent lower than diesel.
Energy consumers worldwide are trying to tap new fuel sources like wind-power or crops after economic growth in the United States and China strained crude oil supplies, pushing prices to records.
Unelco, which supplies power to about half Vanuatu's 220,000 people, is burning about 8,000 liters, or 2,113 gallons, of coconut oil a week at a four-megawatt power plant.
It may double the fuel mix to 10 percent this year as part of a strategy to reduce its 10 million liters of annual diesel imports.
Electric Power in Samoa is running the smallest generator at its Salelologa power station on the western island of Savaii on a 15 percent fuel mix.
In Britain, where the government wants 5 percent of all motor fuel to come from biofuels by 2010, Biofuels is spending �30 million, or $53 million, to build a plant to make 250,000 tons of fuel a year from palm and rapeseed oil.
Coconut oil for delivery in January and February cost $580 a metric ton in Rotterdam on Dec. 28, 12 percent less than a year earlier.
"The economics are too difficult" for large-scale use of coconut oil fuel, said Jan Cloin, an advisor with the Fiji-based South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission.
Importing large quantities from the main island of Upolo would almost double the cost after allowing for the booking of tankers, trucks and ferries, he said.
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