Central Asia’s Vast Biofuel Opportunity

The current discoveries of a International Energy Administration whistleblower that the IEA may have misshaped crucial oil forecasts under intense U.S. pressure is, if true (and whistleblowers hardly ever step forward to advance their professions), a slow-burning atomic surge on future worldwide oil production. The Bush administration’s actions in pressuring the IEA to underplay the rate of decrease from existing oil fields while overplaying the chances of finding new reserves have the prospective to toss federal governments’ long-lasting planning into chaos.

Whatever the reality, rising long term international demands appear certain to outstrip production in the next decade, particularly given the high and increasing costs of establishing new super-fields such as Kazakhstan’s overseas Kashagan and Brazil’s southern Atlantic Jupiter and Carioca fields, which will require billions in financial investments before their very first barrels of oil are produced.

In such a scenario, ingredients and alternatives such as biofuels will play an ever-increasing function by stretching beleaguered production quotas. As market forces and increasing prices drive this innovation to the leading edge, among the richest possible production areas has been completely overlooked by investors already – Central Asia. Formerly the USSR’s cotton “plantation,” the area is poised to end up being a major gamer in the production of biofuels if enough foreign investment can be procured. Unlike Brazil, where biofuel is made mainly from sugarcane, or the United States, where it is primarily distilled from corn, Central Asia’s ace resource is a native plant, Camelina sativa.

Of the previous Soviet Caucasian and Central Asian republics, those clustered around the shores of the Caspian, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan have actually seen their economies boom since of record-high energy rates, while Turkmenistan is waiting in the wings as an increasing manufacturer of gas.

Farther to the east, in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, geographical isolation and relatively little hydrocarbon resources relative to their Western Caspian next-door neighbors have largely prevented their ability to money in on increasing worldwide energy needs already. Mountainous Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan stay mainly reliant for their electrical needs on their Soviet-era hydroelectric facilities, but their heightened need to create winter electrical energy has caused autumnal and winter season water discharges, in turn significantly affecting the agriculture of their western downstream next-door neighbors Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.

What these 3 downstream countries do have nevertheless is a Soviet-era legacy of agricultural production, which in Uzbekistan’s and Turkmenistan case was largely directed towards cotton production, while Kazakhstan, starting in the 1950s with Khrushchev’s “Virgin Lands” programs, has actually become a significant manufacturer of wheat. Based on my discussions with Central Asian government officials, provided the thirsty needs of cotton monoculture, foreign propositions to diversify agrarian production towards biofuel would have fantastic appeal in Astana, Ashgabat and Tashkent and to a lower level Astana for those durable financiers happy to wager on the future, particularly as a plant indigenous to the region has actually already shown itself in trials.

Known in the West as false flax, wild flax, linseed dodder, German sesame and Siberian oilseed, camelina is drawing in increased clinical interest for its oleaginous qualities, with a number of European and American companies already examining how to produce it in industrial quantities for biofuel. In January Japan Airlines carried out a historical test flight using camelina-based bio-jet fuel, ending up being the very first Asian provider to experiment with flying on fuel derived from sustainable feedstocks during a one-hour demonstration flight from Tokyo’s Haneda Airport. The test was the culmination of a 12-month evaluation of camelina’s functional performance ability and possible industrial practicality.

As an alternative energy source, camelina has much to suggest it. It has a high oil material low in hydrogenated fat. In contrast to Central Asia’s thirsty “king cotton,” camelina is drought-resistant and immune to spring freezing, requires less fertilizer and herbicides, and can be utilized as a rotation crop with wheat, which would make it of specific interest in Kazakhstan, now Central Asia’s major wheat exporter. Another benefit of camelina is its tolerance of poorer, less fertile conditions. An acre planted with camelina can produce up to 100 gallons of oil and when planted in rotation with wheat, camelina can increase wheat production by 15 percent. A heap (1000 kg) of camelina will contain 350 kg of oil, of which pushing can draw out 250 kg. Nothing in camelina production is lost as after processing, the plant’s debris can be utilized for animals silage. Camelina silage has a particularly appealing concentration of omega-3 fatty acids that make it a particularly great candidate that is recently gaining acknowledgment in the U.S. and Canada. Camelina is quick growing, produces its own natural herbicide (allelopathy) and completes well against weeds when an even crop is developed. According to Britain’s Bangor University’s Centre for Alternative Land Use, “Camelina could be an ideal low-input crop ideal for bio-diesel production, due to its lower requirements for nitrogen fertilizer than oilseed rape.”

Camelina, a branch of the mustard household, is indigenous to both Europe and Central Asia and barely a new crop on the scene: archaeological evidence indicates it has actually been cultivated in Europe for a minimum of three centuries to produce both vegetable oil and animal fodder.

Field trials of production in Montana, presently the center of U.S. camelina research study, showed a large range of results of 330-1,700 lbs of seed per acre, with oil material differing between 29 and 40%. Optimal seeding rates have actually been determined to be in the 6-8 pound per acre range, as the seeds’ small size of 400,000 seeds per pound can develop problems in germination to achieve an optimum plant density of around 9 plants per sq. ft.

Camelina’s capacity could enable Uzbekistan to start breaking out of its most dolorous tradition, the imposition of a cotton monoculture that has distorted the nation’s attempts at agrarian reform considering that accomplishing independence in 1991. Beginning in the late 19th century, the Russian federal government figured out that Central Asia would become its cotton plantation to feed Moscow’s growing fabric industry. The procedure was accelerated under the Soviets. While Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan were likewise bought by Moscow to plant cotton, Uzbekistan in specific was singled out to produce “white gold.”

By the end of the 1930s the Soviet Union had ended up being self-dependent in cotton; 5 years later on it had become a major exporter of cotton, producing more than one-fifth of the world’s production, focused in Uzbekistan, which produced 70 percent of the Soviet Union’s output.

Try as it might to diversify, in the absence of options Tashkent stays wedded to cotton, producing about 3.6 million loads yearly, which brings in more than $1 billion while making up approximately 60 percent of the nation’s tough currency income.

Beginning in the mid-1960s the Soviet federal government’s instructions for Central Asian cotton production largely bankrupted the area’s scarcest resource, water. Cotton uses about 3.5 acre feet of water per acre of plants, leading Soviet planners to divert ever-increasing volumes of water from the area’s 2 primary rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, into ineffective irrigation canals, leading to the remarkable shrinking of the rivers’ last destination, the Aral Sea. The Aral, once the world’s fourth-largest inland sea with an area of 26,000 square miles, has actually shrunk to one-quarter its initial size in one of the 20th century’s worst eco-friendly disasters.

And now, the dollars and cents. Dr. Bill Schillinger at Washington State University just recently described camelina’s business design to Capital Press as: “At 1,400 pounds per acre at 16 cents a pound, camelina would generate $224 per acre; 28-bushel white wheat at $8.23 per bushel would garner $230.”

Central Asia has the land, the farms, the irrigation facilities and a modest wage scale in comparison to America or Europe – all that’s missing out on is the foreign investment. U.S. financiers have the money and access to the proficiency of America’s land grant universities. What is particular is that biofuel’s market share will grow in time; less certain is who will profit of developing it as a viable concern in Central Asia.

If the current past is anything to go by it is unlikely to be American and European financiers, fixated as they are on Caspian oil and gas.

But while the Japanese flight experiments suggest Asian interest, American financiers have the scholastic proficiency, if they are prepared to follow the Silk Road into establishing a new market. Certainly anything that lessens water usage and pesticides, diversifies crop production and enhances the lot of their agrarian population will get most cautious factor to consider from Central Asia’s governments, and farming and veggie oil processing plants are not just more affordable than pipelines, they can be built more quickly.

And jatropha‘s biofuel potential? Another story for another time.