While the supermarkets have taken to selling E85 (85% bioethanol, 15% petrol) bl ...

While the supermarkets have taken to selling E85 (85% bioethanol, 15% petrol) blend, France looks set to miss its government target for retail outlets by the end of 2007, writes Brian Warshaw. Meanwhile, sales languish in the Netherlands, serviced by just one pump. Nine months into the French government’s plan to have 500 to 600 pumps dispensing E85 throughout the country’s service station network, just over 25% of the target has been met. With 148 pumps in place, 34 of the mainland’s 96 administrative departments remain without a single retail supplier. The French petroleum company Total has achieved only 30 installations from a publicly announced minimum expectation of 200 outlets. With the June start-up of operations at its Aquitaine plant, AB Bioenergy France* entered into contracts with the major supermarket chains Carfuel (Carrefour), SCA Pétrole et Dérivés (Intermarché), Distridyn (Casino and Cora), Petrovex (Auchan) and Siplec (E. Leclerc), to supply ethanol for direct blending with petrol. According to figures for 2006, the supermarkets between them control 57% of retail fuel sales within the country. The Lacq plant in Aquitaine currently has an annual bioethanol capacity of 50mn litres; but when its new facility is completed in 2008, it will be capable of producing five times that volume. Bioethanol for direct blending will be delivered to the major storage terminals in France - in particular Entrepôt Pétrolier de Gironde in Bordeaux, Rubis terminal in Rouen, and Dépôt Pétrolier de Fos in Fos sur Mer, where the oil companies, hypermarkets and independent suppliers will blend their own 5% (E5) and E85 bioethanol grades. Earlier this year Abengoa Bioenergy Trading Europe also signed a bioethanol supply agreement with Argos Oil for the distribution of E5 and E85 blends in the Netherlands. Argos Oil has 75 service stations countrywide and is currently selling E5 at 17 of these outlets, with just one service station in the Rotterdam area offering an E85 blend. Argos Oil’s bioethanol will be drawn from the secure tank storage capacity that AB Trading Europe retains under a long-term contract at the Port of Rotterdam, and taken in road tankers for blending into E5 and E85 grades. Ultimately, the development of E85 sales in the Netherlands will depend upon a change in the approach of the government towards fuel tax. Fuel tax is currently based on energy content and, as a litre of E85 has less energy than standard petroleum, it sells at a higher price. Currently on sale in the Argos Oil service station at €1.91 a litre, it costs a Dutch motorist more than double the price of the same blend in France, where the average price is €0.83/litre. However, the Dutch government has said that it will not be reviewing the situation until it reveals its fiscal plans for 2009. *Ownership of AB Bioenergy France is 65% Abengoa Bionergía of Spain, and 35% Oceol, a French cooperative of corn producers.