Central Asia’s Vast Biofuel Opportunity

The recent discoveries of a International Energy Administration whistleblower that the IEA might have misshaped crucial oil projections under extreme U.S. pressure is, if real (and whistleblowers hardly ever come forward to advance their professions), a slow-burning thermonuclear 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 possibilities of discovering brand-new reserves have the possible to throw governments’ long-lasting planning into chaos.

Whatever the reality, rising long term global needs appear particular to overtake production in the next years, particularly offered the high and increasing expenses of developing new super-fields such as Kazakhstan’s overseas Kashagan and Brazil’s southern Atlantic Jupiter and Carioca fields, which will need billions in investments before their very first barrels of oil are .

In such a situation, additives and substitutes such as biofuels will play an ever-increasing function by stretching beleaguered production quotas. As market forces and rising rates drive this technology to the leading edge, one of the wealthiest prospective production areas has been absolutely neglected by financiers already – Central Asia. Formerly the USSR’s cotton “plantation,” the region is poised to become a major player in the production of biofuels if adequate foreign investment can be acquired. Unlike Brazil, where biofuel is made largely from sugarcane, or the United States, where it is mainly 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 actually seen their economies boom because 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 reasonably scant hydrocarbon resources relative to their Western Caspian next-door neighbors have mostly prevented their ability to cash in on increasing worldwide energy needs up to now. Mountainous Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan stay mostly dependent for their electrical requirements on their Soviet-era hydroelectric infrastructure, however their increased need to create winter electrical power has resulted in 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 nations 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 officials, offered the thirsty demands of cotton monoculture, foreign propositions to diversify agrarian production towards biofuel would have fantastic appeal in Astana, Ashgabat and Tashkent and to a lower extent Astana for those durable financiers going to bank on the future, particularly as a plant indigenous to the region has actually currently shown itself in trials.

Known in the West as false flax, wild flax, linseed dodder, German sesame and Siberian oilseed, camelina is attracting increased clinical interest for its oleaginous qualities, with several European and American companies already examining how to produce it in industrial quantities for biofuel. In January Japan Airlines carried out a historic test flight using camelina-based bio-jet fuel, ending up being the very first Asian provider to try out flying on fuel stemmed 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 functional efficiency capability and potential business practicality.

As an alternative energy source, camelina has much to recommend 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 immune 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 major wheat exporter. Another bonus 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 ton (1000 kg) of camelina will consist of 350 kg of oil, of which pushing can extract 250 kg. Nothing in camelina production is wasted as after processing, the plant’s particles can be utilized for animals silage. Camelina silage has an especially attractive concentration of omega-3 fats that make it an especially great livestock feed candidate that is simply now gaining recognition in the U.S. and Canada. Camelina is fast growing, produces its own natural herbicide (allelopathy) and completes well against 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 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 hardly a new crop on the scene: archaeological evidence shows it has 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 broad variety 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 identified 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 might enable Uzbekistan to begin breaking out of its most dolorous tradition, the imposition of a cotton monoculture that has deformed the nation’s efforts at agrarian reform because attaining independence in 1991. Beginning in the late 19th century, the Russian government identified that Central Asia would become its cotton plantation to feed Moscow’s growing fabric industry. The process was sped up under the Soviets. While Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan were likewise 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 ended up being self-sufficient in cotton; 5 decades 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 alternatives Tashkent remains wedded to cotton, producing about 3.6 million tons annually, which brings in more than $1 billion while making up approximately 60 percent of the country’s hard cash earnings.

Beginning in the mid-1960s the Soviet government’s directives for Central Asian cotton production mainly bankrupted the region’s scarcest resource, water. Cotton utilizes about 3.5 acre feet of water per acre of plants, leading Soviet organizers to divert ever-increasing volumes of water from the region’s 2 primary rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, into ineffective irrigation canals, resulting in the dramatic shrinkage of the rivers’ final destination, the Aral Sea. The Aral, when the world’s fourth-largest inland sea with a location of 26,000 square miles, has diminished to one-quarter its original size in one of the 20th century’s worst ecological catastrophes.

And now, the dollars and cents. Dr. Bill Schillinger at Washington State University recently explained camelina’s service 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 gather $230.”

Central Asia has the land, the farms, the irrigation infrastructure 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 knowledge of America’s land grant universities. What is certain is that biofuel‘s market share will grow over time; less particular is who will reap the benefits of developing it as a feasible issue 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 suggest Asian interest, American financiers have the scholastic expertise, if they are willing to follow the Silk Road into developing a new market. Certainly anything that lessens water usage and pesticides, diversifies crop production and improves the lot of their agrarian population will get most mindful consideration from Central Asia’s federal governments, and farming and veggie oil processing plants are not only more affordable than pipelines, they can be built more quickly.

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