Central Asia’s Vast Biofuel Opportunity

The recent revelations of a International Energy Administration whistleblower that the IEA might have distorted essential oil projections under extreme U.S. pressure is, if real (and whistleblowers hardly ever come forward to advance their careers), a slow-burning thermonuclear surge on future international oil production. The Bush administration’s actions in pressuring the IEA to underplay the rate of decrease from existing oil fields while overplaying the opportunities of discovering brand-new reserves have the possible to toss federal governments’ long-lasting planning into mayhem.

Whatever the reality, increasing long term global demands appear specific to outstrip production in the next decade, specifically offered the high and increasing costs of establishing 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 circumstance, additives and substitutes such as biofuels will play an ever-increasing role by extending beleaguered production quotas. As market forces and increasing prices drive this innovation to the forefront, one of the wealthiest possible production areas has actually been absolutely neglected by financiers up to now – Central Asia. Formerly the USSR’s cotton “plantation,” the area is poised to end up being a significant gamer in the production of biofuels if sufficient foreign financial investment can be acquired. Unlike Brazil, where biofuel is made 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 former 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 costs, while Turkmenistan is waiting in the wings as a rising producer of gas.

Farther to the east, in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, geographical isolation and fairly little hydrocarbon resources relative to their Western Caspian next-door neighbors have actually mostly their ability to cash in on increasing global energy needs already. Mountainous Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan stay mostly reliant for their electrical needs on their Soviet-era hydroelectric infrastructure, but their increased requirement to create winter season electricity has actually caused autumnal and winter season water discharges, in turn badly impacting the farming of their western downstream neighbors Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.

What these three downstream countries do have however is a Soviet-era tradition of agricultural production, which in Uzbekistan’s and Turkmenistan case was mostly directed towards cotton production, while Kazakhstan, starting in the 1950s with Khrushchev’s “Virgin Lands” programs, has become a major manufacturer of wheat. Based on my conversations with Central Asian federal government authorities, provided 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 lower level Astana for those hardy financiers happy to bank on the future, specifically as a plant indigenous to the region has already shown itself in trials.

Known in the West as false flax, wild flax, linseed dodder, German sesame and Siberian oilseed, camelina is bring in increased clinical interest for its oleaginous qualities, with several European and American business currently examining how to produce it in business quantities for biofuel. In January Japan Airlines carried out a historic test flight utilizing camelina-based bio-jet fuel, becoming the very first Asian carrier to explore flying on fuel originated from sustainable feedstocks during a one-hour demonstration flight from Tokyo’s Haneda Airport. The test was the conclusion of a 12-month evaluation of camelina’s operational efficiency capability and possible business 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 unsusceptible to spring freezing, requires less fertilizer and herbicides, and can be utilized as a rotation crop with wheat, which would make it of particular interest in Kazakhstan, now Central Asia’s significant wheat exporter. Another perk of camelina is its tolerance of poorer, less fertile conditions. An acre planted with camelina can produce approximately 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 include 350 kg of oil, of which pressing can extract 250 kg. Nothing in camelina production is lost as after processing, the plant’s debris can be used for livestock silage. Camelina silage has an especially attractive concentration of omega-3 fatty acids that make it an especially great livestock feed prospect that is just now acquiring recognition in the U.S. and Canada. Camelina is quick growing, produces its own natural herbicide (allelopathy) and completes well versus weeds when an even crop is established. According to Britain’s Bangor University’s Centre for Alternative Land Use, “Camelina might 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 native to both Europe and Central Asia and hardly a new crop on the scene: archaeological proof suggests it has been cultivated in Europe for a minimum of 3 millennia to produce both veggie oil and animal fodder.

Field trials of production in Montana, presently the center of U.S. camelina research, revealed a wide variety of results of 330-1,700 lbs of seed per acre, with oil content differing between 29 and 40%. Optimal seeding rates have actually been identified to be in the 6-8 pound per acre range, as the seeds’ little size of 400,000 seeds per lb can produce issues in germination to achieve an optimal 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 since attaining self-reliance in 1991. Beginning in the late 19th century, the Russian government determined that Central Asia would become its cotton plantation to feed Moscow’s growing fabric 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 actually become self-dependent in cotton; 5 decades later it had ended up being a significant exporter of cotton, producing more than one-fifth of the world’s production, concentrated in Uzbekistan, which produced 70 percent of the Soviet Union’s output.

Try as it might to diversify, in the lack of alternatives Tashkent stays wedded to cotton, producing about 3.6 million loads annually, which generates more than $1 billion while making up approximately 60 percent of the country’s hard cash income.

Beginning in the mid-1960s the Soviet government’s directives for Central Asian cotton production largely bankrupted the region’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 two main rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, into inefficient irrigation canals, leading to the dramatic shrinking of the rivers’ final 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 initial size in among the 20th century’s worst environmental disasters.

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 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 cash and access to the know-how of America’s land grant universities. What is certain is that biofuel‘s market share will grow over time; less certain is who will profit of developing it as a practical concern in Central Asia.

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

But while the Japanese flight experiments suggest Asian interest, American financiers have the academic expertise, if they want to follow the Silk Road into establishing a brand-new market. Certainly anything that minimizes water usage and pesticides, diversifies crop production and improves the great deal of their agrarian population will receive most mindful consideration from Central Asia’s governments, and farming and veggie oil processing plants are not just much less expensive than pipelines, they can be constructed more rapidly.

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