Fuel crisis bulletins for the week

SUMMARY: With high petrol prices here to stay, the Public Transport Users Association says Melbourne’s outer suburbs would become “financially unviable” unless car dependence was reduced. South American countries are nationalising their energy resources whilst farmers and car makers are talking ethanol and biodiesel as alternatives.

---

US car maker in ethanol embrace
CAR manufacturer General Motors is building 20 service stations in the US state of Michigan to sell 85 per cent ethanol blends of petrol. The E-85 blend can be used in "flexible fuel vehicles" -- cars which can use straight petrol or ethanol blends of up to 85 per cent.


Biodiesel oily pulse hope
By KIM WOODS - 26 Apr 06
A SOUTHERN Riverina farmer is encouraging research into a winter dryland pulse crop on the back of the burgeoning biodiesel industry.
Bruce Smith, of Cootamundra, north of Wagga Wagga, said a winter-active grain-only pulse of significant oil content was needed to supplement canola.

The Age: Petrol price sky high, pressuring rates
Alex Makin - Councillor for Maroondah (Victoria) - Thursday, 27 April 2006
Public Transport Users Association spokesman Alex Makin said it was obvious that petrol prices would keep increasing — and repeated the call for better tram, train and bus services. He said Melbourne’s outer suburbs, which are heavily car reliant, would become “financially unviable” unless car dependence was reduced.

ABC NEWS Online
Last Update: Monday, May 1, 2006. 11:20am (AEST)
High petrol prices 'here to stay'
The US Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman says soaring petrol pump prices are here to stay for at least the next couple of years and the US Government can do little in the short term to mitigate it.


Ethanol's Promise
Editorial -Published: May 1, 2006
The political scramble to find quick answers to rising oil prices has produced one useful result, which is to get people talking about substitute fuels that could make us less vulnerable to market forces, less dependent on volatile Persian Gulf oil producers and less culpable on global warming.


By PAULO PRADA - Published: May 2, 2006
Bolivia Nationalizes the Oil and Gas Sector
RIO DE JANEIRO, May 1 — President Evo Morales of Bolivia ordered the military to occupy energy fields around the country on Monday as he placed Bolivia's oil and gas reserves under state control.


Published on Tuesday, May 2, 2006
Cheap Gas Fuels Fracas in Caracas
Three-cents-a-litre has its downside
Low price has service centres fuming
by Tim Harper
At three cents a litre, Venezuelans have the cheapest gas prices in the world, a fraction of the 56 cents they would pay for a litre of bottled water or the 70 cents they would pay for a litre of milk.

---