Eric Watkins
OGJ Oil Diplomacy Editor
LOS ANGELES, June 2 -- Brazil remains committed to developing biofuels despite last year's discovery of giant oil reserves in the presalt area of the Santos basin, according to a government official.
Dilma Rousseff, presidential chief-of-staff, while speaking to sugar and ethanol producers at the Ethanol Summit, said Brazil will continue being the leader in ethanol production and technology development.
Rousseff denied that sugarcane crops would take land from food's rural farmers. "Sugarcane occupies only 0.5% of Brazil's arable land," Rousseff said, adding that technology has allowed Brazilian rural farmers to harvest more sugar cane in the same area.
Rousseff also said the Brazilian government could use ethanol as a substitute for diesel oil to generate electricity in isolated communities in the Amazon region.
"In order to prevent diesel oil from being burned in the Amazon we want to burn ethanol," she said.
"We estimate that, via the Eletrobras system, we can adopt it in isolated generation systems in the Amazon, as it's impossible to take transmission networks to isolated communities," she said.
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