erpecnews

NewS – euroPe
eni agip gets approval
to buy exxonMobil network
in austria
Italian oil giant Eni, which is present in
Austria through Agip, has received formal
approval by the European Commission to
buy ExxonMobil’s downstream business in
the country. The deal includes a network
of 135 Esso retail service stations as well
as ExxonMobil’s industrial and wholesale
business with 36 additional Esso branded
retail service stations owned by resellers.
London will see ‘green’
black cabs in time for
2012 olympics
Zero-emission black cabs will be on the
roads in time to show London’s green credentials
to the world, as people converge on
the capital for the 2012 Olympics. Clean,
near-silent electric motors will be used in
the vehicles, which will have “fuel cell” batteries
charged by converting hydrogen into
electricity. The cabs will emit only water
vapour. The taxis, able to travel at up to
80 mph, will be capable of running for a day
without refuelling. Six specialist hydrogen
filling stations will be constructed around
the capital. London Taxis International,
Intelligent Energy and other partners are
working together to produce the new cabs.
Deputy Mayor Kit Malthouse said: “The
black cab is a London icon but it is also a
source of pollution. This prototype, which
emits only water from its tailpipe, is a glimpse
of how hydrogen technology could soon
play a vital role in cleaning up air quality.”
SoCar in partnership
with aP Petroleum
The State Oil Company of Azerbaijan
( SOCAR) has drawn a foreign operator to
develop its own network of filling stations
in the country. SOCAR informed that the
network is run by its sub-company SOCAR
Petroleum, operating in alliance with foreign
partner AP Petroleum. Earlier this
year, SOCAR opened its first three filling
stations and intends to bring the network
up to 10 petrol stations by this September
with its target being to double the number
of stations by mid-2011.
e.u. announces tighter controls on biofuels
The European Commission have announced
a quality-certification process for biofuels
and ethanol and clarifying limits on fuels
from sensitive areas like forests and partly
drained peat lands. Ensuring that biofuels are
a credible source of low-carbon energy that
deliver greenhouse gas savings compared with
fossil fuels is a key component of European
Union efforts to set standards worldwide for
lowering emissions over the next 10 years.
Europe plans to rely on biofuels to “do most
of the work” reducing emissions from cars
and trucks, the commission, the executive
arm of the European Union, said in a statement
last month. Reducing transportation
emissions was “particularly hard to achieve
and reliance on imported oil is particularly
high”, it said. The 27 member countries of
the European Union agreed two years ago
to generate 10 percent of their transportation
fuel from renewable sources by 2020. A
large proportion is supposed to come from
biofuels. The remainder would come from
other sources, like electric vehicles.
But the green credentials of the policy were
badly dented as energy experts issued a stream
of reports suggesting that many of the biofuels
on the market were causing more emissions
than conventional fuels if the full emissions
costs of producing the fuels were taken into
account. A sudden spike in food prices at
about the same time served to highlight the
potentially negative effects biofuels, which
some experts said were displacing food crops
and making corn, wheat and soy harder to
obtain for human nutritional needs. Some
companies that import palm oil into Europe
have already made commitments to follow
sustainability guidelines under development
by environmental groups and by industry
groups. Mr. Oettinger’s (E.U. energy commissioner)
endorsement represents a way for the
commission to certify that those guidelines
meet E.U. standards, and commission officials
said he planned to call on companies to apply
for the quality stamp before year-end. The
announcement is Mr. Oettinger’s first major
policy statement on renewable energy. Commission
officials said the statement showed his
commitment to restoring the green credentials
of the fuels.
Mr. Oettinger also attempted to clarify that
companies must not interpret existing E.U.
rules to cut down forests or sow crops on
partly drained peat lands for biofuels, commission
officials said. Even partly drained
peat land still contains significant amounts
of stored carbon, which can escape as carbon
dioxide gas once the land is cultivated and
contribute to climate change. But the tighter
4 LateSt NewS, eveNtS, JobS oNLINe – www.PetroLPLaza.CoM
rules on peat lands could anger countries like
Indonesia and Malaysia, which are the major
suppliers of palm oil used to make biodiesel
for European motorists. Officials said trade
experts at the commission had established
that the measures would be compatible with
international trade rules, partly because they
would apply equally to biofuels producers
growing crops inside and outside the bloc.
Mr. Oettinger’s quality stamp, “Recognized
by the European Union”, also could prove
controversial. He still must reach a decision
on how to calculate the emissions created
when food crops have been displaced by
fuel crops, and when areas containing high
stores of carbon like grasslands, peat lands
or forests are chopped down to produce the
food crops elsewhere.
E.U. officials said Mr. Oettinger’s stamp
could include criteria on Indirect Land Use
Change, in the jargon of emissions experts,
once he decides on the scale of its effects at
the end of this year. But experts warned that
the stamp risked ending up being criticized
for legitimizing unsustainable practices. A
“labeling system which is not dealing with
the indirect effects will not be regarded as
a guarantee for sustainability”, said Jan Ros,
Project Leader for bioenergy at the Netherlands
Environmental Assessment Agency, a
Dutch national institute for environmental
research and planning. “The real challenge
is to find biofuels that do not create these
indirect effects like fuels from crops grown
on degraded lands or fuels generated from
waste products”, Mr. Ros said. E.U. officials
said the stamp would be added to the labels
used by sustainability programs managed
by governments, civil society organizations
or industry bodies that meet E.U. criteria.
Although the certification would last for five
years, it would also rely on annual checks
done by outside auditors, but those audits
would be paid for by fuel producers.
Companies would also be free to decide how
to display the stamp, and that could limit its
use to farmers and processors. But commission
officials said they were hopeful that fuel companies
would also begin voluntarily displaying the
label at fuel pumps, so that motorists seeking
greener options would feel assured that their
purchase was making a contribution to the
environment. Commission officials also said
they wanted to use a light touch in regulating
how biofuels were labeled, so that companies
achieving higher-than-average reductions in
greenhouse gases compared with fossil fuels,
or companies applying even more ambitious
sustainability criteria, could devise their own
certification programs.