B7 biodiesel to be sold in Sarawak, Sabah, Labuan from end of January

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BINTULU: A total of 366 petrol kiosks in Sarawak, Sabah and Labuan will be selling B7 palm oil biodiesel from the end of this month,
Plantation Industries and Commodities Minister Datuk Amar Douglas Uggah Embas said.

He said the environmentally-friendly fuel, a blend of seven per cent palm oil biodiesel and 93 per cent petroleum diesel, had been sold on limited basis in Sabah, Sarawak and Labuan since December 2014.

“The fuel, which meets international standards, will use 138,000 tonnes of palm oil biodiesel a year,” he said at the launch of biodiesel B7 in Sarawak, Sabah and Labuan, here today.

Uggah said the use of biodiesel B7 in Sabah, Sarawak and Labuan would increase the total usage of the palm oil biodiesel to 576,000 tonnes throughout country a year as the fuel had been fully implemented in Peninsular Malaysia.

“The Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB) had spent RM340 million to build 35 petroleum depots nationwide to blend biodiesel,” he said, adding that five of them were in Sarawak (owned by Petronas, Shell and Synergy), eight in Sabah (owned by Petronas, Shell and Petron) and two in Labuan (owned by Petronas and Shell).

Uggah said biodiesel B7 was now widely used in European Union countries since 2009, Thailand (since January 2014) and Indonesia (since February 2012).

He said MPOB was studying biodiesel B10 compatibility by increasing palm oil biodiesel content to 10 per cent or more through the implementation of the palm oil biodiesel incentive scheme (IBS) on voluntary basis with the industrial sectors.

Biodiesel B10 and B20 will be experimented on MPOB’s vehicles, including that of its research station, while biodiesel B10 would be tried on 10 Alam Flora Sdn Bhd’s vehicles and 50 Kuala Lumpur City Hall’s (DBKL) vehicles, he added.

“To encourage the use of palm oil biodiesel in industrial sectors, MPOB has allocated RM3 million under IBS by offering the fuel for sale or usage at RM300 per tonne,” he said, adding that the programme which had been implemented since March 2013 would increase palm oil biodiesel consumption to as much as 10,000
tonnes a year.

MPOB director-general Datuk Dr Choo Yuen May said MPOB had commercialised the production of winter palm oil biodiesel technology at three dedicated plants in Malaysia which the capacity of blending 30,000 tonnes of the fuel per year. -Bernama