Biodiesel coming to a Lowcountry station

Biodiesel, the fuel of the future championed by Willie Nelson, among others, is sprouting at a Lowcountry gas station.

The BP Gas Mart in Ladson (exit 203 off Interstate 26) is now pumping diesel that's cut 5 percent with fuel from North Charleston-based Southeast BioDiesel.

Though it is billed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by almost 80 percent, biodiesel has been hard to come by in the Lowcountry. As of October, there were 75 stores selling alternative fuels in South Carolina, according to the state Energy Office. However, almost all of those pumps were in the Upstate and only one of the sites was in Charleston — at the Fox Music Store, oddly enough.

Southeast BioDiesel is a Charlotte-based company, but it processes poultry fat into 7 million gallons of biodiesel every year on the former Navy base in North Charleston. So if you've got an old Benz or a big truck, roll up to Ladson and give it a try.

Chile reception

Ambassador Mariano Fernandez of the Embassy of Chile in Washington visited Charleston on Friday and said during a stop at the College of Charleston that the bilateral trade agreement between his country and the United States benefits both nations.

Speaking to students and business people as part of the South Carolina World Trade Center's Embassy Series, Fernandez said the split between the value of goods exported from the U.S. to Chile and those imported from the South American country that hugs the continent's west coast is almost even.

About $9 billion worth of goods are sent to Chile each year from U.S. manufacturers, mostly agricultural machinery and engine parts, and about $7.5 billion worth comes in the opposite direction, usually in the form of wood and paper products and cases of Chile's famous wines.

Since Chile and the U.S. reached the free trade agreement in 2003, trade between the two countries has increased 200 percent.

Last year, exports from the U.S. to Chile soared 30 percent, Fernandez said.

"And we're working hard to improve and grow this relationship," he said. "That shows the free trade agreement is not just good for the country that signed it, but also for the U.S. itself."

Last year Chile exported 3,500 different products worldwide worth $70 billion.

In terms of container volume, Chile ranks as the State Ports Authority's 13th-largest customer for imports and exports combined.

The equivalent of nearly 30,000 20-foot-long containers moved between the two countries during the SPA's last fiscal year that ended June 30.

That's good volume for a country of just 16 million people.

Small biz, big bucks

The American Small Business League has launched a national campaign to abolish the Defense Department's Comprehensive Subcontracting Plan Test Program, arguing that it encourages fraud and abuse in federal small-business subcontracting.

Under the current requirements, in effect since 1990, any government contractor that fails to meet its small-business contracting goal is required to pay damages to the federal government in the amount of the deficiency.

However, participants in the test program, which include BAE Systems, GE Aviation, General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin, are allowed to circumvent the liquidated damages clause, and therefore avoid penalties for not contracting with small businesses, the league maintains.

Lloyd Chapman, the group's president, said the test program was "clearly written by lobbyists for major prime contractors in the defense and aerospace industry" and needs to end "immediately."

He said it's "ridiculous" that the test program is still in place 18 years after it was introduced. The league estimates that during those nearly two decades, hundreds of billions of dollars in federal small-business subcontracting dollars have been diverted from legitimate small businesses to the giants.

The league will now do some lobbying of its own: a campaign to abolish the program.