Central Asia’s Vast Biofuel Opportunity

The recent discoveries of a International Energy Administration whistleblower that the IEA may have distorted crucial oil forecasts under intense U.S. pressure is, if real (and whistleblowers hardly ever come forward to advance their professions), a slow-burning atomic surge 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 opportunities of finding brand-new reserves have the potential to toss federal governments’ long-lasting planning into mayhem.

Whatever the reality, increasing long term worldwide needs appear specific to outstrip production in the next years, especially provided 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 need billions in investments before their first barrels of oil are produced.

In such a situation, additives and replacements such as biofuels will play an ever-increasing function by stretching beleaguered production quotas. As market forces and increasing costs drive this innovation to the forefront, among the richest prospective production locations has been completely overlooked by financiers up to now – Central Asia. Formerly the USSR’s cotton “plantation,” the area is poised to end up being a major player in the production of biofuels if sufficient foreign investment can be procured. 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 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 rates, while Turkmenistan is waiting in the wings as a rising manufacturer of gas.

Farther to the east, in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, geographical seclusion and reasonably scant hydrocarbon resources relative to their Western Caspian next-door neighbors have mostly hindered their capability to capitalize rising global energy needs up to now. Mountainous Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan remain mainly reliant for their electrical requirements on their Soviet-era hydroelectric infrastructure, but their increased need to create winter electricity has led to autumnal and winter water discharges, in turn significantly impacting the agriculture of their western downstream next-door neighbors Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.

What these three downstream countries do have however is a Soviet-era legacy of farming 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 actually become a significant manufacturer of wheat. Based upon my conversations with Central Asian government officials, provided the thirsty needs of cotton monoculture, foreign propositions to diversify agrarian production towards biofuel would have fantastic appeal in Astana, Ashgabat and Tashkent and to a lesser level Astana for those durable financiers going to wager on the future, especially as a plant native to the region has actually already shown itself in trials.

Known in the West as incorrect flax, wild flax, linseed dodder, German sesame and Siberian oilseed, camelina is bring in increased scientific interest for its oleaginous qualities, with a number of European and American business currently 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, ending up being the very first Asian provider to try out flying on fuel originated from sustainable feedstocks throughout a one-hour presentation flight from Tokyo’s Haneda Airport. The test was the conclusion of a 12-month assessment of camelina’s functional efficiency ability and prospective commercial viability.

As an alternative energy source, camelina has much to advise it. It has a high oil content 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 specific interest in Kazakhstan, now Central Asia’s significant wheat exporter. Another reward of camelina is its tolerance of poorer, less fertile conditions. An acre sown 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 load (1000 kg) of camelina will include 350 kg of oil, of which pushing can extract 250 kg. Nothing in camelina production is lost as after processing, the plant’s debris can be utilized for animals silage. Camelina silage has a particularly appealing concentration of omega-3 fatty acids that make it an especially great animals feed prospect that is just now gaining 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 developed. According to Britain’s Bangor University’s Centre for Alternative Land Use, “Camelina might 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 family, is native to both Europe and Central Asia and hardly a new crop on the scene: archaeological evidence shows it has actually been cultivated in Europe for a minimum of 3 millennia to produce both grease and animal fodder.

Field trials of production in Montana, presently the center of U.S. camelina research, revealed a vast array of outcomes of 330-1,700 lbs of seed per acre, with oil material varying between 29 and 40%. Optimal seeding rates have actually been identified to be in the 6-8 lb per acre variety, as the seeds’ small size of 400,000 seeds per lb can produce issues in germination to accomplish an optimal plant density of around 9 plants per sq. ft.

Camelina’s capacity might allow Uzbekistan to start breaking out of its most dolorous legacy, the imposition of a cotton monoculture that has distorted the nation’s efforts at agrarian reform given that achieving self-reliance in 1991. Beginning in the late 19th century, the Russian federal government identified that Central Asia would become its cotton plantation to feed Moscow’s growing textile market. The procedure was sped up under the Soviets. While Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan were likewise purchased 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 ended up being self-dependent in cotton; 5 years later it had ended up being a major 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 options Tashkent remains wedded to cotton, producing about 3.6 million tons annually, which brings in more than $1 billion while making up around 60 percent of the country’s hard cash earnings.

Beginning in the mid-1960s the Soviet federal government’s instructions for Central Asian cotton production mostly bankrupted the area’s scarcest resource, water. Cotton uses 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 ineffective 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 a location of 26,000 square miles, has actually shrunk to one-quarter its initial size in one of the 20th century’s worst environmental 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 generate $224 per acre; 28-bushel white wheat at $8.23 per bushel would gather $230.”

Central Asia has the land, the farms, the watering facilities 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 know-how of America’s land grant universities. What is specific is that biofuel’s market share will grow over time; less particular is who will profit of establishing it as a feasible issue in Central Asia.

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

But while the Japanese flight experiments indicate Asian interest, American investors have the scholastic know-how, 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 consideration from Central Asia’s governments, and farming and grease processing plants are not only more affordable than pipelines, they can be developed more quickly.

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