Total turns Brazil into bioenergy center
Valor Econômico
The President of gas and energy of the French oil company Total, Philippe Boisseau, has informed the company is about to enter the sugar cane processing in Brazil. However, not in order to produce fuel ethanol, like its rivals Petrobras, Shell and BP do. In an interview to Valor during the Ethanol Summit in São Paulo, the Executive explained the goal of the multinational is to seek the raw material - sugarcane juice - in the country to promote its global growth in second-generation bioenergy. The plan is to include sugarcane-made biokerosene, biodiesel and biolubricants in the portfolio. The group plans to invest € 5 billion worldwide in bioenergy sources until 2020, including solar energy.
Boisseau explained that in the "technology support" of the project is the American Amyris, which Total is the largest international shareholder, with 22% of interest. The American is in Brazil for nearly two years with partnerships with some of the largest groups of the sugar and alcohol segment like Cosan and São Martinho. Its focus is to develop yeasts to convert sugar into chemical compounds. With Amyris, Total already has a contracted chemical production equivalent to the crushing of 6 million tons of sugarcane. "Soon", said the executive, the contract will be extended so that, in four years, the supplied volume be equivalent to the processing of 13 million tons.
Besides being a shareholder of Amyris, Total has partnerships with several biotechnology companies for the development of advanced technologies. With earnings of € 159 billion in 2010, Total has ambitious market share goals regarding the Brazilian sugarcane, says Boisseau. Among them is achieving, in ten years, between 5% and 10% of the crushing of sugarcane in Brazil. The French already fights for the acquisition of sugar and alcohol assets in the country. According to sources heard by Valor, two plants of the Clealco group which are also fought for by other players, like Açúcar Guarani / Petrobras Biocombustíveis and the India Shree Renuka, which has a unit beside the plants of Clealco, are on the radar of the company.
But Boisseau prefers not to comment whether the assets are being negotiated or not. "Acquisition is an option because we do not know how to produce and process the sugarcane. We are starting in the process focusing on finding the right partner", said the executive. The decision of investing in Brazil, he says - who, in São Paulo, attended for the first time an ethanol conference - was taken because the country complies with the guidelines of the company of not competing with the production of foods. The low level of subsidies and the sustainable use of the land have also weighed on the decision. Fifth largest oil and gas company in the world, Total has no exact forecast of the amount it should invest in Brazil in the coming years. "But, as a reference, we have plans to invest € 5 billion in all areas defined by us as bioenergy until 2020" he reiterated.