While the
government is encouraging to develop ethanol petrol products to protect the
environment, E5 petrol, in the Environment Law to be applied as of 2012, is
still listed as the product that bears high environment tax rate. This explains
why E5 petrol remains not cheap enough to attract users.

The good solution to protect
environment…

E5 petrol
has been put on sale after the Prime Minister released the Decision No 177,
declaring the plan on developing biofuels by 2015 with a vision through 2025.
To date, E5 petrol has been available in eight provinces and big cities in the
country, according to Cong Thuong newspaper.

Scientists
have pointed out that E5 is a good solution for the fuel problem, because this
is an environment friendly product which can be used instead of fossil fuels
like oil and coal, which are getting exhausted.

Research
conducted by the Hanoi University of Technology on two kinds of vehicles –
Honda Super Dream (motorbike) and Ford Laser (car) – showed that if using E5,
vehicle users can save 5 percent of fuel in comparison with A92 petrol, while
vehicles can still run well.

Especially,
it is less costly to use E5 petrol, because this kind of fuel can prolong the
life of some parts of the engines. Meanwhile, the longer engine life also means
lower costs on maintenance.

Most importantly, the widespread use of biofuels allows utilizing available
fuels and reducing the reliance on oil.

Emission
measurements show that the vehicles using biofuels always have the CO, CO2
concentrations lower or equal to that of A92 petrol. Especially, the hydro
carbon concentration (HC) of E5 petrol is 39, lower than that of A92 at 61. The
test, once again, has confirmed the conclusion by scientists that the use of E5
petrol allows cleaner emissions.

Nong nghiep
Vietnam has quoted an expert
as saying that “if Vietnam
only uses E5 petrol, it will be able to save 6 trillion dong a year which is
the spending on 300 million liters of petrol.”

… still not the choice of vehicle
users

Statistics
show that the sales of E5 petrol have been slowing down. Dau tu has quoted
Nguyen Thi Dieu Hanh, a senior executive of PV Oil as saying “that to date, E5
petrol has been sold at 50 filling stations of PV Oil (95 percent are regular
petrol, 5 percent is ethanol). In August 2010, when PV Oil began selling E5,
the number of E5 sales points was 30 only. However, the sales of E5 have not
increased in accordance with the increases of the number of sale points.”

According
to Hanh, in the last five months of 2010, PV Oil sold 4200 cubic meters, or 4.2
million liters of E5. Meanwhile, since the beginning of the year, with the
number of sale points increasing by two folds, PV Oil has also sold 4.2 million
liters.

The Thai
Thinh filling station in Hanoi, the first
filling station in Vietnam
which sells E5 petrol, has reported that the number of people buying E5 petrol
just accounts for 10 percent of the total buyers.

Currently,
only PV Oil and Petech are selling E5 at their 80 retail points, a modest
number if noting that there are 14,000 retail points nationwide. Meanwhile,
Petrolimex, which is the biggest distribution network of petroleum products, holds
60 percent of the market share with 6000 filling stations, and does not sell
E5.

Why?

The problem
is that E5 petrol is not cheap enough. Previously, E5 petrol’s price was lower
by 500 dong per liter than A92 petrol, but the price gap between the two kinds
of petrol has reduced to 200 dong.

This means
that vehicle users will not be able to save much money if they use E5.
Meanwhile, no motorbike and automobile manufacturer in Vietnam has
officially stated that E5 would be good for the engines in their products.

While the
government is encouraging to develop ethanol petrol products to protect the
environment, E5 petrol, in the Environment Law to be applied as of 2012, is
still listed as the product that bears high environment tax rate.

“To date, enterprises
have not got any support from the government in selling E5, while it requires
heavier investments to store and sell E5,” Hanh said.

C. V