Malaysian company to retro-fit diesel power plants to use palm oilKuala Lumpur 6/12/2001 - Tenaga Nasional Bhd is currently looking into"retro fitting" its diesel-powered plants in Sabah to enable the machinesof diesel in generating electricity. Its chairman Datuk Dr Jamaludin MohdJarjis said power plant generators in Sabah are suitable for plam oilintake as they are diesel powered.As for gas-fired power generators in the Peninsular, Tenaga is lookinginto mixing palm oil with medium fuel oil (MFO).He said this at a media briefing in the restructuring and direction of theMalaysian electricity supply in Kuala Lumpur yesterday. At the moment, thepalm oil-MFO mixture is done only at its Prai station, Penang. The oilpalm intake power started at the Prai power station on April 12, 2001 with5,000 tonnes of crude palm oil (CPO) burnt. The vegetable oil was blendedwith MFO at a set ratio to produce a viable burning fuel.The project was mooted by Primary Industries Minister Datuk Seri Dr LimKeng Yaik aimed at reducing national palm oil stocks.It was targeted to burn 20,000 to 50,000 tonnes of palm oil a month andtake away some 500,000 tonnes or 5 per cent of the national production byyear-end.By shipping palm oil supply out of the market, it was hoped that thesagging palm oil prices would be improved. Currently, palm oil prices arehovering at an improved level of between RM 700 and RM 800 per tonne.A foreign news report said that the Primary Industries Minister will holda meeting on Friday to discuss a revised plan on palm oil burning. Therevised plans centred on promoting palm oil as power generator fuel.Quoting a senior government official, it said that the prospects of usinga mixture of diesel and refined palm olein will also be discussed. Themixture will be applicable in smaller power generators in Sabah andSarawak.An earlier plan was to use a different mix of MFO and CPO as fuel. But itcould not be done on a big scale as most Tenaga�s gas from MFO. The planwas to replace MFO with the CPO-MFO mix.The official estimated that there are about 70 power generator setsdedicated to smaller towns in Sabah and Sarawak. About 80 per cent ofthese are owned by Tenaga, the official said.