Biodiesel pode ser a chave para ganhar a guerra no Afeganistão

(Notícia em Inglês)
A new white paper from Wayne Arden, an expert in the financial technology field, and John Fox, a former CEO of a biodiesel company, makes the case that if biodiesel was produced in the landlocked country, U.S. and allied forces fighting the Taliban and Al Qaeda would gain certain advantages:

The first insight is that it is very expensive for the military to import fuel into Afghanistan. In October 2009 DOD officials reported to Congress that the average cost of importing fuel into Afghanistan, or the Fully Burdened Cost of Fuel (FBCF), approaches $400 per gallon when all direct and indirect costs are accounted for, and even sometimes exceeds $400. A 2008 Defense Science Board study, “More Fight Less Fuel,” described the FBCF as “several hundred dollars per gallon.”

The second insight is that modern biodiesel production technology is both proven technology and relatively inexpensive. The cost of building a medium-sized plant, even in Afghanistan, is on the order of tens of millions of dollars, not hundreds of millions or more.

The third insight is that a high percentage of U.S. casualties in Afghanistan stem from protecting convoys of fuel, water, and other military supplies. The Army calculated in a 2009 study that one casualty occurs for every 24 fuel resupply convoys in Afghanistan.

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