New Delhi, June 29: British Petroleum and D1Oils Plc, which today announced a joint venture to produce biodiesel, will increase the area under jatropha in India to 2.5-3.5 lakh hectares or up to a third of a global target of 1 million hectares. The extract of a jatropha plant is used in biodiesel.

D1Oils India has tied up with Williamson Magor to plant jatropha in the Northeast. Mohan Meakins will help the company in growing the plant in the south. The company is also talking to state governments and farmers.

Samiran Das, CEO of D1Oils India, said: “We have just 46,000 hectares of jatropha oil seed plantations. We plan to use large tracts of waste and uncultivated land to take this to 1 lakh hectares by the end of this year. Within four years we hope to reach 2.5 lakh to a third of a million hectares, which is our global target.”

The British biodiesel firm has already signed contract farming deals in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan to grow jatropha in arid and fallow land. “We do not want to replace food crops on cultivated land. We are targeting land which is not used for cultivation. In tea gardens we used slopes which do not support the bushes,” said Das.

The biodiesel company, which has tied up with BP for infusion of some £80 million, will set up oil extraction plants in eastern and southern India and is also planning a biodiesel refinery at a later date. D1 hopes to raise the production to 2.7 tonnes of oil per hectare from 1.7 tonnes when the trees mature after five or six years.

D1Oils chairman S. Singh said, “We hope diesel marketers in India will also start mixing 5 per cent biodiesel with their fuel.” The norm in the EU is to have 2 per cent biodiesel and 98 per cent diesel in a litre. The limit for biodiesel may go up to 5 per cent in the near future.