Energy Minister Clive Mullings (right), with Petrojam E10 ethanol project Environmental Co-ordinator Nicole Smith and Project Manager Dwayne Lewis, together at the Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica (PCJ) head office in New Kingston, where they announced the launch date for the new blend of gasoline.

Mid 2009 will see the long-awaited availability of E10, gasoline made with ethanol replacing MTBE as the 10 per cent fuel additive. This will be available at pumps across Jamaica, announced Petrojam, the state-owned oil refinery yesterday.

Phase one in April will include the nine eastern parishes while phase two in May will add Hanover, Westmoreland, St James, St Elizabeth and Trelawny in the west.
At an earlier date, in October, people can begin buying the new fuel from the Petrojam refinery on Marcus Garvey Drive.

E10 is expected to be cheaper than MTBE, a polluting imported oil product. With rising world oil prices the national oil import bill continues to rise year-on-year, up from over US$1.7 billion in 2006 to over US$2 billion last year.

The rollout will be accompanied by a six-week media campaign to sensitise the public who may have concerns about the new fuel - derived as it is from sugar - which in its usual state causes damage when added to a car engine.

However E10 can even be safely added to a tank which already contains regular gasoline, said Nicole Smith, Environmental Co-ordinator for the project at the announcement held at Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica (PCJ) headquarters in New Kingston yesterday.

E10 is expected to have several benefits for Jamaica including: reducing oil dependency; improving air quality and boosting production and employment in the sugar industry.

However, the Petrojam ethanol dehydration plant will continue to use imported Brazilian feedstock until local production has been revived following the purchase of a 75 per cent stake in the Sugar Corporation of Jamaica (SCJ) and its five factories by Infinity BioEnergy of Brazil.

Currently all ethanol produced by Petrojam is exported to the United States taking advantage of the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI) agreement which allows the Brazilians to benefit from lower import tariffs by virtue of converting the sugarcane feedstock into ethanol in Jamaica.

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