The ANP held yesterday (5/5) a public hearing on the draft resolution that aims to create the Biodiesel Quality Monitoring Program (PMQBio). The Agency's initiative aims to contribute to ensuring product quality throughout the supply chain. The program will monitor compliance with quality specifications, in order to ensure that fuels sold by economic agents meet the limits required for physical-chemical parameters.

During the opening, the director of the ANP Symone Araújo (photo) highlighted that, “due to the specific characteristics of biodiesel, the ANP considered the creation of a program to verify the quality of this fuel relevant. In this way, it will be able to feed society with valuable information on the fulfillment of technical specifications, ensuring that the diesel B component products (diesel with added biodiesel) sold in Brazil meet the criteria established in the specifications and reach the consumer with the best possible quality. ”.

The PMQBio will have a format similar to the new PMQC (Fuel Quality Monitoring Program). It is planned to collect samples of biodiesel from economic agents followed by physical-chemical analyzes, allowing the production of statistical data on the quality of products and the identification of possible non-conformities. The proposed model foresees the accomplishment of, at least, two random annual collections of samples in liquid fuel distributors and biodiesel producers, through the private financing of the economic agents involved, like the procedure provided for in ANP Resolution No. 790, of 2019, that deals with the new model of the PMQC.

The collected samples will be analyzed in private laboratories that won the bid to be carried out by the ANP and hired by the economic agents. Studies carried out by the Agency show that PMQBio is not expected to have an impact on fuel prices to consumers. The results of the analyzes will be published in a semi-annual bulletin, publicizing the quality situation of biodiesel and diesel A (diesel without the addition of biodiesel) in the country. The non-compliant results will be communicated to the inspection of the ANP and associated agencies.

In operation since 1998, the PMQC has been successful as an inducer of quality assurance actions by companies or market institutions, of eliminating information asymmetries, in addition to guiding, as the main vector of intelligence, inspection actions the Agency itself and associated agencies. Quality indexes above 97% registered in the last years for fuels (diesel B oil, gasoline C and hydrated ethanol) portray the contribution of the PMQC to the final consumer.

Biodiesel was introduced in the Brazilian matrix in 2005, with voluntary use, and in 2008, in a mandatory manner with a proportion of 2%. Since then, the biodiesel content in road diesel oil has been gradually increasing, and should reach 15% in 2023, as established by Resolution CNPE nº 16/2018. In order for the mixture of biodiesel to diesel to continue to efficiently serve the proposed use, the ANP decided, among other measures in progress, to implement the PMQBio.

The draft resolution was in public consultation for 45 days. Comments and suggestions received during the period can be consulted on the Public Consultation and Hearing page No. 3/2021.