Oil producer focuses on biofuel
2008-05-04 11:40
Lagos - In his office in Lagos, Alain Salleras, a Frenchman of about 50 for whom biofuels are something of a crusade, is working away at his pet project - producing ethanol from sweet sorghum in Nigeria.
Salleras, executive director of Global Biofuels Ltd, which has partnered with India's Praj Industries and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) for its project, is at pains to pre-empt any questions on the growing controversy over the alleged impact of biofuels on agriculture.
"Contrary to manioc, sorghum, of which Nigeria is the world's leading producer, has no impact on food supply," Salleras emphasised.
Indeed, if he is to be believed, sweet sorghum has only advantages over sugar cane, another crop often grown for biofuels.
He says sorghum requires one quarter of the water that sugar cane needs, it produces two or three harvests a year, you get far more ethanol per hectare under cultivation - nearly four times as much in fact - and there is no wastage.
"To make the ethanol we only take the stalks, which are rich in sugar. The grains go for food and the rest for animal fodder," he says.
Even the fibrous residue from the crushed stalks, known as "bagasse," is recycled. This biomass is boiled to produce steam to make electricity.
Global Biofuels has taken on a Nigerian specialist Babatunde Obilana, who spent 20 years with the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), working notably on Zimbabwe and Kenya.
Salleras, a former executive with French construction company Vinci, the former Société Générale d'Entreprises, and compatriot Jean Lamoliatte aim to be producing their first litre of sorghum-based Nigerian ethanol next summer.
In Ondo state to the west of Lagos the sorghum seeds have been sown at Arigidi Akoko and the processing plant will be built by Praj Industries, a biofuels technology company.
Initally Salleras is expecting daily production of 9 000 litres. That is estimated to rise to 240 000 litres a day when the full 10 000 hectares of sweet sorghum are ready for harvest.
By this summer 300 hectares will be ready for harvest and by April or May of next year between 3 000 and 6 000 will be ready.
This is still a far cry from the 30m litres of fuel consumed every day in Nigeria, but the boss of Global Biofuels has big ambitions.
In three to five years' time he is aiming to produce five percent of Nigeria's total consumption, that is around 1.5m litres a day.
Global Biofuels plans to establish seven ethanol refineries, each with an associated plant for livestock feed production, in various parts of Nigeria. Each refinery/feed plant will jointly employ 8 000 Nigerians and create an additional 40 000 indirect jobs, the company says.
"It's the first in a long series of projects, in line with the Kyoto Protocol engagements which stipulate that by 2020 10% of energy consumed must be of non-fossile origin," Salleras explained.
Construction work on the second of the seven plants will start in June in Ekiti, a state sharing a common border with Ondo.
The Ondo state project alone represents an investment of some $70m, 65% of which is from private investors. The rest will be financed by credits.
NNPC has undertaken to buy all Global Biofuels' production in Nigeria and plans to use it for automobile fuel and for powering breweries and pharmaceuticals plants.
Nigeria, which despite being Africa's biggest oil producer, suffers from a chronic fuel shortage, is counting on biofuels to help solve the problem.
NNPC in 2005 created a Renewable Energy Division (RED) tasked with developping biofuels from manioc or sugar cane, two crops that are abundant in Nigeria.
The unit aims to have a prosperous national biofuels industry up and running by the middle of 2012.
- AFP