The O Globo newspaper reports that Brazil’s state-run oil firm Petroleo Brasileiro SA (PBR), or Petrobras, last week made its first shipment of ethanol to the United States last week.

According to thew publication, a vessel with 12,000 cubic meters of ethanol left the port of Rio de Janeiro for the U.S., and that Petrobas plans another shipment of 20,000 cubic meters of ethanol to the U.S. this month.

Despite imposing an import tax of more than $0.50 per gallon against Brazilian ethanol, the U.S. is Brazil’s top ethanol export market.  Petrobras said it should export around 850 million liters of ethanol in 2007, which includes markets like Nigeria and Venezuela and test volumes to Japan.

President Bush and Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva met at the Camp David presidential retreat this weekend(for the second time in three weeks) to discuss trade and ethanol.

Pres. da Silva hopes to advance a biofuels alliance and help break a deadlock in world trade talks known as the Doha Round, which were launched in 2001 and stalled last year.  Developing countries were upset because rich nations wouldn’t make significant cuts in farm subsidies and demanded greater access to markets in the developing world.  No major breakthrough on those talks was expected at Camp David.

“What the two presidents want to review is where we are and what needs to be done and what President Bush and President Lula can do to move forward,” said Dan Fisk, the National Security Council’s senior director of Western Hemisphere affairs. 
The two leaders’ talks on ethanol was expected follow up a memorandum of understanding to promote international ethanol that the two nations signed when Bush visited Brazil on March 9.  Fisk said the two hoped to announce a handful of Caribbean and Central American nations that will be the beneficiaries of pilot programs for biofuels development.
Last Friday, Silva reiterated Brazil’s position that the alternative fuel will not gain traction worldwide unless the U.S. drops a 53-cent-per-gallon tariff on Brazilian ethanol: “The subsidies provided under America’s corn-based ethanol program have spurred an increase in U.S. cereal prices of about 80%,” Silva wrote in The Washington Post. “This hurts meat and soy processors worldwide and threatens global food security.”
The promotion of ethanol could eventually help wean the U.S. off its need for foreign oil, officials say, lessening the energy dependence on volatile Middle Eastern nations and Venezuela, whose President Hugo Chavez has long been a political thorn in the Bush administration’s side.
Teaming up with Brazil on the promotion of ethanol, however, hasn’t pleased everyone.  U.S. Corn farmers don’t like the idea of the government helping Brazil’s industry, which they see as a competitor.  Lawmakers from corn-growing states have registered their complaints with Bush.