TOKYO - Japan will start next week the first test sales in a city of gasoline mixed with ethanol to meet Kyoto emissions targets, two months behind schedule due to difficulties in finding a petrol supplier outside the nation's major refiners. Project manager, the Osaka municipal government, said on Friday it would start selling on October 9 gasoline directly blended with up to 3 percent of ethanol (E3) at two pump stations in suburban areas at a price similar to regular gasoline.
TOKYO - Japan will start next week the first test sales in a city of gasoline mixed with ethanol to meet Kyoto emissions targets, two months behind schedule due to difficulties in finding a petrol supplier outside the nation's major refiners.
Project manager, the Osaka municipal government, said on Friday it would start selling on October 9 gasoline directly blended with up to 3 percent of ethanol (E3) at two pump stations in suburban areas at a price similar to regular gasoline.
Apart from the oil industry's lead in promoting another alternative fuel, the Osaka project is key for the Japanese government's target to replace 500,000 kilolitres (kl) a year, or 0.6 percent of annual crude oil consumption for auto use, with biofuels by 2010.
Osaka prefecture, in western Japan, has said the country's first cellulosic ethanol plant in Sakai city would provide ethanol from waste wood to the project as the plant's commercial production began in January.
But the powerful oil industry has been reluctant to supply gasoline to the E3 test sale, as it is promoting gasoline blended with ethyl tertiary butyl ether (ETBE) -- a petrol additive made from biomass ethanol -- a popular renewable fuel in Europe.
Osaka prefecture and the blender of gasoline with the ethanol, Chusei Oil Co Ltd, based in Okayama city, western Japan, declined to comment on Friday on either the gasoline supplier or the volume of gasoline procured. Chusei said that the volume is sufficient for blending purposes in the six months to March.
"We've procured gasoline from the market," Masahiro Kasamatsu, an Osaka official in charge of the project, said in a telephone interview.
"But I think cooperation from domestic oil industry is a must for Japan to further promote E3," he added.
The oil industry has said it would share 210,000 kl of the central government's target by 2010 of 500,000 kl by introducing the ETBE-blended gasoline, initially using imported ETBE.
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The test sale project in Osaka is one of the steps to meet the remaining 290,000 kl.
The five-year project is backed by the environment ministry, which has provided it subsidies of 700 million yen ($6 million) for the fiscal year to next March.
A small-scale test sale has started on the island of Miyakojima, in southern Japan, using E3 made from sugar cane produced there.
The oil sector, which depends mostly on imported crude oil, is anxious to defend its nationwide network through its own alternative fuel, launching a subsidized trial sale at 50 pump stations in Tokyo and surrounding areas in April, on top of ordinary gasoline.
($1=116.44 Yen)
