March 2011

BP has made a $680 million (£424 million) investment in Brazil with a purchase of one of the nation's leading biofuels companies.

The British energy giant now owns 83 per cent of the shares of the Companhia Nacional de Açúcar e Álcool (CNAA), which is one of the world's leading producers of sugar cane and ethanol biofuel.

Recently, the banned alcoholic drink Four Loko was being recycled into car fuel, and today, it’s non-food waste from crops and wood scraps. Cellulosic ethanol is by no means a new idea, but no one has been producing it in bulk amounts.

Strong production of Southeast Asian palm oil is the best hope of boosting cooking oil supplies as soybean oil gets soaked up to make biofuel, its attraction redoubled by unrest in Libya that has driven crude oil to more than $100 per barrel.

Vegetable oil markets had braced for a fall in palm oil prices in the second half of 2010. They expected strong output from top producer Indonesia as it harvested a bigger acreage, and as No. 2 supplier Malaysia improved yields.

Ilya Mikhalchuk, the Governor of Arkhangelsk Region, held a meeting with Vladimir Shishov, the Vice-Governor for Natural Resources Management, Agricultural Sector and Ecology and Yuri Trubin, the Minister for Natural Resources and Timber Industry Complex of Arkhangelsk Region.