Dreams and visions

from w
What happened to the dream and vision of cassava for bio-fuel, or jatropha or one of a dozen plants that can produce the wonder-alternative to petrol and coal? Now here is another one - proposed for Vanua Levu. Their website doesn't tell much though, only dreams and visions I think. No hard data. No experiements cited. Half the stories in the Fiji media is nostalgia, the other half dreams and visions of far-away! This is a new species of plants to me but I think it has other names such as Pongi.

Bio Fuel industry in Vanua Levu
Monday, May 18, 2009

A foreign Company intends to set up a bio fuel Industry in Vanulevu - that can save this country $1.2 billion dollars in fuel prices.

Chief Executive Officer of Bio Fuel International Jim Gibbons says – they intend to invest in this project - the most dynamic introduced in the South Pacific since the Southern Cross - $174m of direct investment over the first three years.

Gibbons says - it only needs to work with landowners who will give their land to plant the raw material for the bio fuel – a plant called Pongamis the fruit of which is required for making bio fuel.

Gibbons says - all that the company requires from the land owners is their land which they will still own - to plant the Pongamis.

“I propose this council that my company pays with its own foreign invested dollars all the costs to plant the trees on your lands. I propose my company educate and train your people to oversea this crop on their land and I propose that we become life partners in the harvesting of this seed for the refinery that will stop the flow of $1.2 billion of annual dollars out of this country and invest it instead on Fiji farmers, Fiji Land, Fiji people and the country of Fiji.”

Fiji Broadcasting Corporation LTD