Oil giant Shell says that it plans to team up with Cosan, Brazil’s largest sugarcane-to-ethanol processor, merging assets to form a US$12-billion ethanol-production joint venture in Brazil. Eyes are firmly fixed on exporting more ethanol from the country in the future, analysts note. The two firms announced a non-binding agreement on 2 February. Shell would contribute Brazilian petrol stations, $1.6 billion in cash and its shares in the cellulosic biofuel firm Iogen, based in Ottawa, Canada, and the biofuels start-up Codexis in Redwood City, California.

The Financial Times wonders if this will be remembered as “the day Shell became serious about biofuels,” while The Times’s poetic take on the news is that “Shell hopes to create a river of ethanol flowing from Brazilian plantations to forecourts around the world” – though it adds that the company may be buying into a controversy over labour conditions in developing countries.