This past week has been a big one for Brazil. It was announced that the country will host the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. Brazil had already being chosen to host the 2014 soccer World Cup. This was also a week of optimism about Brazil's petroleum sector with large expanded claims about deep offshore oil fields being made.Although the US is the largest producer of ethanol by volume, ethanol accounts for a larger percentage of Brazil's transport fuel use. Ethanol is the same alcohol in beverages (don't drink from the fuel pump though as there are many often poisonous additives - see footnote below about the bottle in the picture to the right).
In Brazil, most ethanol is made from sugarcane. In the US most ethanol is produced from corn, which is a less efficient energy-wise and a more expensive process. The US does not have the same Brazilian Amazonian conditions to grow such large sugar volumes.
One of the observations I made during my time here was that ethanol prices are extremely low at Brazilian pumps compared to gasoline. I wondered: how this could be with twenty year high sugar prices (US24 cents per pound) and moderate petroleum crude prices (US$70 per barrel)?
A little background first: all gasoline at Brazilian retail stations must by law contain at least 25% ethanol, with the other 75% being petroleum-based gasoline. This blend is known as E25. Most Brazilian retail stations have two pumps: one for E25 snf one for ethanol. All gasoline in the US must contain at least 10% ethanol (E10) and it tends to be only in the US midwest corn belt that second pumps offering high (E85) ethanol blends exist.
The US has a 54 US cents per gallon tariff on ethanol imports. The US tariff is to try to prevent non-US ethanol producers from taking advantage of the hefty 51 US cents per gallon subsidy which ethanol producers in the US receive in order to kick start and scale up US ethanol production.
The US ethanol tariff effectively eliminates the ability of Brazil to export ethanol to the US. Brazil has no import tariff on ethanol.
Brazil has no ethanol subsidy now (it did until the 1990s) and Brazil has called many times for the US to remove its 54 cents per gallon import tariff.
However, in reality Brazil does subsidize ethanol by heavily taxing gasoline. E25 Gasoline in Brazil is roughly US$5.15 per gallon at the retail pump at the moment (BRL 2.40 per liter). Ethanol in brazil is currently US$2.95 per gallon (BRL 1.39 per liter). This equates ethanol to 58% of the cost of E25 gasoline. Ethanol should be around of 70% the cost of E25 gasoline based on the mileage it permits.
The high Brazilian tax on E25 gasoline is effectively a clever ethanol subsidy.
You may wonder why everyone in Brazil doesn't switch away from petroleum gasoline to ethanol? They are, with around 94% of new vehicles sold being flex fuel vehicles capable of burning high ethanol blends. It tends to be imported luxury vehicles and older non-luxury vehicles which still use E25 gasoline.
(note on the picture above: the bottle contains a mineral water from the Brazilian city of Petropolis, which is named after Pedro, the second and last Brazilian Emperor, rather than petroleum. I can vouch from my one bottle that the water is tasty and does not contain any hydrocarbons.)
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