EU due to vote 10 July to limit food crops in biofuels

"EU continues to debate a plan cap the percentage of biofuels made from food crops, with a final vote due to occur on 10 July...Most of the environmental impacts cited in the EEA report are a result of deforestation, draining of peatlands and other land clearance for biofuels, together known as indirect land use change (ILUC)."

News articles include:
Biofuel crop mix 'not favourable for environment'.  A report by the European Environment Agency found benefits vary significantly depending on the source of crops
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jul/03/biofuel-crop-mix-environment

EU votes on crucial cap on biofuels made from food crops. Campaigners fear lobbying by industry and farmers' unions will weaken plans to limit role of food crops in biofuels production
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2013/jun/19/eu-votes-biofuels-food-crops

Sustainable palm oil: how successful is RSPO certification? The industry's certification body champions the multi-stakeholder approach, but it needs to move faster. Oliver Balch interviews the organisation's secretary general
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainable-business/sustainable-palm-oil-successful-rspo-certification

Khor Reports' Palm Oil #3 newsletter: Trade tussles, corporate outlook, prices & more

KHOR REPORTS' PALM OIL JUL/AUG 2013, ISSUE 3: Trade tussles. Corporate: Who’s got the best prices & growth prospects? EU biodiesel: certification, anti‐dumping & ILUC. Nigeria worries about duty evaders. Better info on saturated fats & Vitamin E tocotrienols. Frontier expansion: Nigeria, Mindanao & more. Price outlook muted, eyes on China & crude oil.


View our newsletter here:

http://tinyurl.com/qzeqfgt
(**kindly note this was updated on 10 July 2013, including pg. 7 on average selling prices; earlier version was 2 July 2013).

Contents:
Indonesia’s four land bank issues.
Malaysia’s new minister. 
Saturated fats targeted in standards setting.
Vitamin E tocotrienols.
EU biodiesel certificates.
Indonesia’s new customary forests.
SE Asia’s peat fire season – 20% in OP concessions?
Feature: Trade tussles: EU anti‐dumping duties, new sustainability rules, Argentina’s WTO move, TPPA & GM concerns; Nigeria’s palm protectionism.
Corporate outlook.
Nigeria investors & recent frontier plans. 
Key vegetable oils.
Weather outlook.
CPO technical view.
Price charts - including Oil World's latest price view

Great Haze II: PSI measures for Malaysia and Singapore

Malaysia and Singapore offer lagging indicators for their air pollutant index reporting.
 
Malaysia air pollutant index

This can be found at this website: http://www.doe.gov.my/apims/

It reports Muar, Johor, 7am measure of an astonishing reading of 746 while southern Johor has readings ranging about 120-140. KL has readings just above 100 and Klang at 188.Note that these are 24-hour averaged figures.


The high reading for Muar is consistent with the information that the super dense haze zone has moved northward from Singapore, where it was positioned a few days ago:




Singapore PSI readings

These can be found here: http://www.nea.gov.sg/psi/. However, the shift to 3-hourly average and then 24-hourly average reporting smooths out the results and turns this into a historical record. This makes the Singapore report less useful for members of the public who might want to avoid going out when the current actual PSI is particularly high.



Consistent with the shift northwards of the super dense smog haze zone, readings in Singapore have moderate and are now below 100.




Best practice note: Available 24-hour, 7 day a week; PM10 and PM2.5; real-time current PSI readings; forecast to provide alert of pollution episodes; and several historical ranges of indicators using 24-hour averaged statistical summaries.

Great Haze II - burning concessions identified by Greenpeace

This study by Greenpeace presents hots spots for 11-21 June mapped onto palm oil concession. Just palm oil concessions? According to WRI study, these account for 20% of hot spots. There are other types of concessions afire and about half of fires are outside of concession areas. Anyhow, in the coming weeks, the Haze Blame Game will unfold.


Great haze II - the blame game starts

It’ll be interesting to see which companies get investigated and possibly blamed for contributing to SE Asia's second great haze. The recently announced Indonesia list of names being investigated coincides with WRI's report which uses NASA data on fires overlaid on plantation concession maps (yellow highlighted names).

Foreign-owned and foreign-based Indonesian companies seem to be the focus of the first set of names announced. More companies will be named in days to come, presumably to include the locally based Indonesian names.

The Indonesian government had identified 8 Malaysian and 2 Singaporean based companies behind the forest burning in Sumatera.  They are under investigation.

Malaysia-owned:
  1. PT Langgam Inti Hiberida [KLAU RIVER ENT SDN BHD]
  2. PT Bumi Rakksa Sejati, 
  3. PT Tunggal Mitra Plantation [SIME DARBY]
  4. PT Udaya Loh Dinawi,
  5. PT Adei Plantation [KLK]
  6. PT Jatim Jaya Perkasa [*NOT OWNED BY WILMAR - updated 23 June 2013]
  7. PT Multi Gambut Industri,
  8. PT Mustika Agro Lestari

Singapore-based:
  1. Asia Pulp & Paper 
  2. APRIL         

WRI's analysis with NASA fire data is worth looking at. Weblink: http://insights.wri.org/news/2013/06/peering-through-haze-what-data-can-tell-us-about-fires-indonesia.

WRI's analysis of NASA fire alert data during the recent period, finds that 48% of the fires were outside of concession areas, 27% in timber plantations, 20% in oil palm areas, 4% in protected areas and 1% in logging areas. The high proportion (nearly half) outside of concession areas differs from NGO assessments of an earlier SE Asian haze episode which only attributed 20% of "blame" on smallholder farmers. Does this imply that plantation practices have improved?





WRI provides a top 15-17 list with ranking of concession companies by the number of fire alerts in their areas. The oil palm list and the timber plantation lists are as follows: