Central Asia’s Vast Biofuel Opportunity

The recent revelations of a International Energy Administration whistleblower that the IEA might have distorted essential oil forecasts under extreme U.S. pressure is, if real (and whistleblowers seldom come forward to advance their professions), a slow-burning thermonuclear explosion on future global oil production. The Bush administration’s actions in pushing the IEA to underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the possibilities of finding brand-new reserves have the prospective to throw federal governments’ long-term preparation into mayhem.

Whatever the truth, increasing long term global needs appear specific to outstrip production in the next years, specifically given the high and rising expenses 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 first barrels of oil are produced.

In such a circumstance, ingredients and substitutes such as biofuels will play an ever-increasing function by extending beleaguered production quotas. As market forces and rising costs drive this technology to the leading edge, one of the richest possible production locations has actually been absolutely overlooked 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 adequate foreign financial investment can be obtained. 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 actually seen their economies boom since of record-high energy rates, while Turkmenistan is waiting in the wings as a rising producer of gas.

Farther to the east, in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, geographical seclusion and reasonably scant hydrocarbon resources relative to their Western Caspian neighbors have largely hindered their capability to cash in on rising worldwide energy needs up to now. Mountainous Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan remain mostly reliant for their electrical needs on their Soviet-era hydroelectric infrastructure, however their increased requirement to generate winter season electrical power has resulted in autumnal and winter season water discharges, in turn seriously affecting the agriculture of their western downstream neighbors Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.

What these 3 downstream countries do have however is a Soviet-era tradition of agricultural production, which in Uzbekistan’s and Turkmenistan case was largely directed towards cotton production, while Kazakhstan, beginning in the 1950s with Khrushchev’s „Virgin Lands“ programs, has become a major producer of wheat. Based on my conversations with Central Asian federal government officials, provided the thirsty needs of cotton monoculture, foreign proposals to diversify agrarian production towards biofuel would have terrific appeal in Astana, Ashgabat and Tashkent and to a lower extent Astana for those hardy financiers ready 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 drawing in increased clinical interest for its oleaginous qualities, with a number of European and American companies already investigating how to produce it in commercial 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 experiment with flying on fuel obtained from sustainable feedstocks during a one-hour presentation flight from Tokyo’s Haneda Airport. The test was the culmination of a 12-month evaluation of camelina’s operational performance capability and possible commercial 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 particular interest in Kazakhstan, now Central Asia’s major wheat exporter. Another perk 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 ton (1000 kg) of camelina will consist of 350 kg of oil, of which pressing can extract 250 kg. Nothing in camelina production is wasted as after processing, the plant’s particles can be used for livestock silage. Camelina silage has a particularly attractive concentration of omega-3 fats that make it an especially great animals feed 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 versus weeds when an even crop is established. According to Britain’s Bangor University’s Centre for Alternative Land Use, „Camelina could be an ideal 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 indigenous to both Europe and Central Asia and barely a brand-new crop on the scene: archaeological evidence suggests it has been cultivated in Europe for a minimum of three millennia to produce both grease and animal fodder.

Field trials of production in Montana, currently the center of U.S. camelina research, showed a vast array of outcomes of 330-1,700 pounds of seed per acre, with oil content varying 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 pound can create problems in germination to achieve an ideal plant density of around 9 plants per sq. ft.

Camelina’s capacity might permit Uzbekistan to start breaking out of its most dolorous tradition, the imposition of a cotton monoculture that has distorted the nation’s efforts at agrarian reform given that attaining self-reliance 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 market. The process was accelerated under the Soviets. While Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan were also purchased by Moscow to plant cotton, Uzbekistan in was singled out to produce „white gold.“

By the end of the 1930s the Soviet Union had ended up being self-sufficient in cotton; 5 years later on it had actually 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 absence of alternatives Tashkent stays wedded to cotton, producing about 3.6 million heaps 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 directives for Central Asian cotton production mostly 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 area’s two primary rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, into inefficient irrigation canals, leading to the remarkable shrinking of the rivers’ final destination, 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 diminished to one-quarter its original size in one of the 20th century’s worst environmental disasters.

And now, the dollars and cents. Dr. Bill Schillinger at Washington State University recently explained camelina’s company 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 infrastructure and a modest wage scale in comparison to America or Europe – all that’s missing out on is the foreign investment. U.S. investors have the money and access to the proficiency of America’s land grant universities. What is specific is that biofuel’s market share will grow with time; less particular is who will profit of establishing 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, fixated as they are on Caspian oil and gas.

But while the Japanese flight experiments indicate Asian interest, American financiers have the academic proficiency, if they are willing to follow the Silk Road into establishing a new market. Certainly anything that decreases water usage and pesticides, diversifies crop production and enhances the great deal of their agrarian population will receive most careful factor to consider from Central Asia’s federal governments, and farming and grease processing plants are not only much cheaper than pipelines, they can be built more quickly.

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