Company Researches Right Shrub for Biodiesel Stock
Global Energy Trading Co. is ready to roll after two years of researching new biodiesel fuel sources and discovering Jatropha curcas L.
Jatropha is a weed-like shrub or small tree that can grow nearly anywhere frost doesn't occur; has a 40-year fruit production life-cycle, is not part of the food chain supply, and requires few pesticides or fungicides. Its golf ball-sized fruit contains seeds that are pressed to extract the oil that has been used as a lighting and heating energy source for decades in communities throughout the world.
With Jatropha as its designated biofuel feedstock, the company is now "at the point of execution in creating a capital market," announced James Fanning, chair and chief executive officer.
The company is working with Esperanza Morales, Ph.D., and is involved in acquiring large tracts of land in Colombia and Peru for the first successful large-scale propagation of Jatropha.
Though used in India, Africa, and other countries for many decades as fuel and for medicinal purposes, Jatropha surprisingly has never been mass cultivated. The company is in the process of purchasing approximately 60 square miles for a plantation to be established in Colombia, and finalizing negotiations on an approximately 40-square-mile parcel in Peru.