Central Asia’s Vast Biofuel Opportunity

The current revelations of a International Energy Administration whistleblower that the IEA may have distorted crucial oil projections under intense U.S. pressure is, if real (and whistleblowers hardly ever come forward to advance their careers), a slow-burning atomic explosion on future international oil production. The Bush administration’s actions in pushing the IEA to underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the chances of finding brand-new reserves have the possible to throw governments’ long-lasting planning into turmoil.

Whatever the reality, increasing long term worldwide needs seem certain to outstrip production in the next years, specifically given the high and rising expenses 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 investments before their very first barrels of oil are produced.

In such a situation, additives and alternatives such as biofuels will play an ever-increasing function by extending beleaguered production quotas. As market forces and rising costs drive this innovation to the forefront, among the wealthiest prospective production areas has been totally overlooked by financiers already – Central Asia. Formerly the USSR’s cotton “plantation,” the region is poised to end up being a major gamer in the production of biofuels if enough foreign financial investment can be procured. Unlike Brazil, where biofuel is produced mostly from sugarcane, or the United States, where it is mostly distilled from corn, Central Asia’s ace resource is an indigenous plant, Camelina sativa.

Of the previous Soviet Caucasian and Central Asian republics, those clustered around the coasts of the Caspian, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan have seen their economies boom since of record-high energy prices, while Turkmenistan is waiting in the wings as a rising producer of natural gas.

Farther to the east, in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, geographical seclusion and fairly little hydrocarbon resources relative to their Western Caspian neighbors have actually mainly inhibited their capability to capitalize increasing international energy needs already. Mountainous Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan stay largely dependent for their electrical needs on their Soviet-era hydroelectric facilities, but their heightened requirement to generate winter electrical power has caused autumnal and winter 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 however is a Soviet-era legacy of farming 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 major manufacturer of wheat. Based upon my discussions with Central Asian federal government authorities, offered the thirsty demands of cotton monoculture, foreign proposals to diversify agrarian production towards biofuel would have fantastic appeal in Astana, Ashgabat and Tashkent and to a lesser level Astana for those durable investors ready to bet on the future, especially as a plant native to the region has currently proven 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 numerous European and American companies currently examining how to produce it in industrial quantities for biofuel. In January Japan Airlines undertook a historic test flight utilizing camelina-based bio-jet fuel, becoming the first Asian carrier to experiment with flying on fuel originated from sustainable feedstocks during a one-hour demonstration flight from Tokyo’s Haneda Airport. The test was the culmination of a 12-month assessment of camelina’s operational efficiency ability and prospective business practicality.

As an alternative energy source, camelina has much to suggest it. It has a high oil content low in saturated fat. In contrast to Central Asia’s thirsty “king cotton,” camelina is drought-resistant and unsusceptible to spring freezing, needs less fertilizer and herbicides, and can be used as a rotation crop with wheat, which would make it of particular interest in Kazakhstan, now Central Asia’s significant wheat exporter. Another reward 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 include 350 kg of oil, of which pushing can extract 250 kg. Nothing in camelina production is squandered as after processing, the plant’s debris can be utilized for animals silage. Camelina silage has an especially appealing concentration of omega-3 fatty acids that make it an especially great animals feed prospect that is recently getting acknowledgment in the U.S. and Canada. Camelina is quick growing, produces its own natural herbicide (allelopathy) and contends well against weeds when an even crop is developed. According to Britain’s Bangor University’s Centre for Alternative Land Use, “Camelina might be a perfect low-input crop suitable for bio-diesel production, due to its lower requirements for nitrogen fertilizer than oilseed rape.”

Camelina, a branch of the mustard household, is native to both Europe and Central Asia and barely a new crop on the scene: historical proof shows it has actually been cultivated in Europe for at least 3 millennia to produce both grease and animal fodder.

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

Camelina’s potential could permit Uzbekistan to begin breaking out of its most dolorous tradition, the imposition of a cotton monoculture that has distorted the nation’s efforts at agrarian reform because 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 also ordered by Moscow to plant cotton, Uzbekistan in particular was singled out to produce “white gold.”

By the end of the 1930s the Soviet Union had actually become self-sufficient in cotton; five decades later on it had actually become a significant 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 may to diversify, in the absence of options Tashkent stays wedded to cotton, producing about 3.6 million tons every year, which generates more than $1 billion while constituting approximately 60 percent of the nation’s hard cash earnings.

Beginning in the mid-1960s the Soviet government’s regulations 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 coordinators to divert ever-increasing volumes of water from the region’s 2 primary rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, into ineffective watering canals, leading to the significant shrinking of the rivers’ last location, the Aral Sea. The Aral, once the world’s fourth-largest inland sea with a location of 26,000 square miles, has shrunk to one-quarter its original size in among the 20th century’s worst eco-friendly catastrophes.

And now, the dollars and cents. Dr. Bill Schillinger at Washington State University just recently described camelina’s organization model 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 amass $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 financial investment. U.S. financiers have the money and access to the expertise of America’s land grant universities. What is particular is that biofuel‘s market share will grow in time; less certain is who will reap the benefits of establishing it as a feasible concern in Central Asia.

If the current past is anything to go by it is not likely to be American and European financiers, focused as they are on Caspian oil and gas.

But while the Japanese flight experiments show Asian interest, American financiers have the scholastic competence, if they want to follow the Silk Road into developing a new market. Certainly anything that lessens water use and pesticides, diversifies crop production and enhances the great deal of their agrarian population will receive most mindful consideration from Central Asia’s federal governments, and farming and vegetable oil processing plants are not just much than pipelines, they can be built more quickly.

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