Bolivia’s plan to use oil palm as biodiesel

Bolivia’s president, Luis Arce, made official a decree that seeks to promote oil palm plantations to produce biodiesel in the country and reduce dependence on fuel imports.

The document, signed in July, was officially presented on Tuesday during the commemoration of the “Day of the Agrarian, Productive, and Community Revolution” in the Cochabamba region before hundreds of peasants and indigenous militants of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS).

During his speech, Arce stressed that Bolivia imports diesel and gasoline, fuels used by peasants in machinery and transport of their production to the cities, so he considered that this dependence must “change”.

For this reason, he advanced that the Andean country would bet on producing “oleiferous species”, such as African palm and jatropha, to generate its own fuels.

“We are going to start producing our own diesel,” the president said. However, in his speech, he made it clear that the priority must be to guarantee food “substituting imports”, given the “deep economic and social crisis” the world is going through.

THE PLAN

In July, the Bolivian government signed a supreme decree creating the Program to Promote the Production of Olive Species, within the framework of the import substitution industrialization policy, to produce biodiesel.

Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB) foresaw an investment of around US$300 million to build an ecological diesel production complex, including the Hydrotreated Vegetable Oils plant.

According to the project, YPFB would work with the Ministries of Rural Development and Productive Development to plant, harvest, and produce raw materials.

At the moment, tenders, land conditioning, and soil tests have already begun for two biodiesel plants with FAME technology (biofuel produced through the transesterification of vegetable oils) next to the refinery in Santa Cruz, according to ABI.

Biodiesel and renewable diesel can be produced from vegetable oils. The most common raw materials for this purpose are soybean, cusi, and African palm, which occur in the north of La Paz, Pando, and Beni.

NOT EVERYONE AGREES

The National Coordinating Committee for the Defense of Native Indigenous Peasant Territories and Protected Areas of Bolivia (Contiocap) regretted the Bolivian government’s decision in an open letter to Francia Márquez, the next Vice President of Colombia.

During Márquez’s visit to La Paz last Monday, the movement considered that the Bolivian government’s project to promote oil palm plantations to produce biodiesel “represents a threat of further deforestation of the Amazon and other regions of Bolivia”.

Contiocap considers that palm monoculture could impact biodiversity and the environment.

With information from RT