Central Asia’s Vast Biofuel Opportunity

The current discoveries of a International Energy Administration whistleblower that the IEA might have misshaped essential oil forecasts under extreme 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 pressing the IEA to underplay the rate of decrease from existing oil fields while overplaying the opportunities of discovering new reserves have the prospective to throw federal governments’ long-term planning into turmoil.

Whatever the reality, increasing long term global needs seem specific to outstrip production in the next years, specifically offered the high and rising costs of developing brand-new super-fields such as Kazakhstan’s offshore 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, ingredients and substitutes such as biofuels will play an ever-increasing role by extending beleaguered production quotas. As market forces and increasing prices drive this technology to the leading edge, among the richest possible production locations has been completely ignored by investors already – Central Asia. Formerly the USSR’s cotton “plantation,” the region is poised to become a major player in the production of biofuels if enough foreign financial investment can be obtained. Unlike Brazil, where biofuel is manufactured mainly from sugarcane, or the United States, where it is mainly 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 because of record-high energy costs, while Turkmenistan is waiting in the wings as an increasing manufacturer of gas.

Farther to the east, in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, geographical seclusion and reasonably little hydrocarbon resources relative to their Western Caspian neighbors have actually largely hindered their ability to money in on increasing worldwide energy needs up to now. Mountainous Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan stay mainly reliant for their electrical requirements on their Soviet-era hydroelectric infrastructure, but their heightened requirement to produce winter electrical power has actually led to autumnal and winter water discharges, in turn significantly impacting the farming of their western downstream neighbors Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.

What these three downstream nations do have nevertheless is a Soviet-era tradition of agricultural production, which in Uzbekistan’s and Turkmenistan case was mainly directed towards cotton production, while Kazakhstan, beginning in the 1950s with Khrushchev’s “Virgin Lands” programs, has actually become a significant manufacturer of wheat. Based on my conversations with Central Asian government authorities, provided the thirsty needs of cotton monoculture, foreign proposals to diversify agrarian production towards biofuel would have great appeal in Astana, Ashgabat and Tashkent and to a lower extent Astana for those hardy investors happy to bet on the future, especially as a plant native to the area has already shown itself in trials.

Known in the West as incorrect flax, wild flax, linseed dodder, German sesame and Siberian oilseed, camelina is drawing in increased scientific interest for its oleaginous qualities, with several European and American business already examining how to produce it in commercial amounts for biofuel. In January Japan Airlines undertook a historic test flight utilizing camelina-based bio-jet fuel, becoming the first Asian provider to experiment with flying on fuel originated from sustainable feedstocks throughout a one-hour demonstration flight from Tokyo’s Haneda Airport. The test was the culmination of a 12-month examination of camelina’s operational performance ability and potential industrial practicality.

As an alternative energy source, camelina has much to 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, requires less fertilizer and herbicides, and can be used as a rotation crop with wheat, which would make it of specific interest in Kazakhstan, now Central Asia’s major wheat exporter. Another reward of camelina is its tolerance of poorer, less fertile conditions. An acre planted with camelina can produce as much as 100 gallons of oil and when planted in rotation with wheat, camelina can increase wheat production by 15 percent. A lot (1000 kg) of camelina will consist of 350 kg of oil, of which pushing can extract 250 kg. Nothing in camelina production is lost as after processing, the plant’s particles can be used for livestock silage. Camelina silage has a particularly attractive concentration of omega-3 fatty acids that make it a particularly great livestock feed prospect that is recently gaining recognition in the U.S. and Canada. Camelina is quick growing, produces its own natural herbicide (allelopathy) and competes well versus weeds when an even crop is established. According to Britain’s Bangor University’s Centre for Alternative Land Use, “Camelina could be a perfect low-input crop appropriate for bio-diesel production, due to its lower requirements for nitrogen fertilizer than oilseed rape.”

Camelina, a branch of the mustard family, is native to both Europe and Central Asia and barely a new crop on the scene: historical evidence shows it has 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, showed a wide variety of outcomes 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 develop issues in germination to attain an ideal plant density of around 9 plants per sq. ft.

Camelina’s potential might enable Uzbekistan to begin breaking out of its most dolorous legacy, the imposition of a cotton monoculture that has warped the country’s efforts at agrarian reform considering that accomplishing independence in 1991. Beginning in the late 19th century, the Russian government figured out that Central Asia would become its cotton plantation to feed Moscow’s growing textile market. The process was sped up under the Soviets. While Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan were also ordered by Moscow to sow cotton, Uzbekistan in specific was singled out to produce “white gold.”

By the end of the 1930s the Soviet Union had 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 lots annually, which brings in more than $1 billion while constituting roughly 60 percent of the country’s hard cash earnings.

Beginning in the mid-1960s the Soviet federal government’s directives for Central Asian cotton production mainly bankrupted the area’s scarcest resource, water. Cotton utilizes 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 main rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, into inefficient irrigation canals, leading to the dramatic shrinkage of the rivers’ last location, the Aral Sea. The Aral, as soon as 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 catastrophes.

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

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

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

But while the Japanese flight experiments show Asian interest, American financiers have the academic proficiency, if they want to follow the Silk Road into establishing a new market. Certainly anything that reduces water usage and pesticides, diversifies crop production and enhances the great deal of their agrarian population will get most cautious factor to consider from Central Asia’s federal governments, and farming and grease processing plants are not just much cheaper than pipelines, they can be constructed quicker.

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