Investments In Jatropha Green Oil Investment Programmes Speeds Up

In India and Singapore, huge investments in technology, research and manufacturing plants to produce biodiesel from Jatropha green oil plants are taking place.

Tata Chemicals Aquires The Marketing Rights For Joil Pte’s Jatropha Seedling Growth Technology

When Tata Chemical of India decided to embrace the biofuel market it did so by buying Jatropha plant propagation technology through an acquisition of over a third of JOil Pte’s shares, according to Business-Standard. (The fruit from Jatropha plants bear a green oil that can be refined to biodiesel.)

Tata Chemicals, is a leading manufacturer of caustic soda and fertilisers and JOil Pte is a based in Singapore. The rights to market the technology that creates the perfect seed varieties for biodiesel production will now belong to Tata.

A budget of some 80 crore Rupees (18m USD) has been set by Tata to cover their investment over the next 4 years.

More and more countries are searching for renewable alternative energy sources as in a response to global warming and the run-down in crude oil reserves. Biofuels are a strong contender and such fuels can be made by processing the green oil emitted by Jatropha plant berries.

Indigenous oil prices have tumbled 65 percent from $145 down to $52 a barrel, at the time of preparing this report. Tata Chemicals have indicated that the price for which they can sell Jatropha-based biodiesel and still make a profit is around 55-60 $ a barrel.

Managing Director of Tata Chemicals, Homi R Khusrokhan is reported to have said that “No one is expecting crude to remain at this level”, and that “We have made the investment keeping 2-3 years in mind, when we expect crude oil to trade at $100 a barrel”.

Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory (TLL) is a non-profit organization affiliated to the National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University and was formed to perform state-of-the-art research in genetics and molecular biology. They established JOil to develop processes that allow Jatropha plants having a uniformly high yield to be reproduced.

Inconsistent as the output from Jatropha trees is at present Tata hopes to have overcome that deficiency by applying the research undertaken by Temasek Life Science Laboratory. “We will have an exclusive global marketing right to the research…” Khusrokhan remarked.

A year, or more, of study will be conducted by a lab set up by the company for that purpose before the product will be commercially launched.