Andrei Moutchkine

The return of "1st gen" European biodiesel?

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(edited)

There seems to be a creeping boom in "1st gen biodiesel" fuels, which are supposedly obsolete

https://www.neste.com/investors/market-data/biodiesel-prices-sme-fame

The only relevant discussion in the mainstream press Google finds for me seems to be this

https://www.npr.org/2021/10/19/1047288476/a-biodiesel-boom-and-conundrum

Says US soybean oil is being priced out of food range, but this is not it, with SME plot relatively flat and FAME picking up. Nonetheless, this is why the "1st gen" biofuels are supposed to be obsolete in the first place. (getting into human food supply) As we can expect this time of the year, the driver appears to be rapeseed instead

https://www.neste.com/investors/market-data/palm-and-rapeseed-oil-prices

(it's got the lowest gel point of any veggie oil) Conclusion, US has been buying so much Urals as to squeeze the EU out of it (It is a heavy crude most useful for diesel) with Europe buying up rapeseed oil instead. This

https://www.neste.com/investors/market-data/urals-brent-price-difference

is noise-level of late. The normal situation is at least ~10% discount on Urals compared to Brent (which is "light and sweet", best for gasoline) For some reason, Oilprice no longer prominently features Urals, despite it being the main source of North American diesel fuel (now that Uncle Sam sanctioned Venezuela and Iran away)

UPD: Actually, it is all relative. SME is up by 1.5x, which is only small compared to 2.5x growth for FAME. All of that just in one month of October. When you click around to plot only one, this widget

https://www.neste.com/investors/market-data/biodiesel-prices-sme-fame

moves the baseline to make an impression :) Great, the plotting widgets come preset for max propaganda impact...

Edited by Andrei Moutchkine

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