Central Asia’s Vast Biofuel Opportunity

The current revelations of a International Energy Administration whistleblower that the IEA may have misshaped essential oil forecasts under intense U.S. pressure is, if true (and whistleblowers seldom step forward to advance their professions), a slow-burning atomic surge on future worldwide 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 new reserves have the potential to throw governments’ long-lasting planning into turmoil.

Whatever the reality, rising long term global needs seem particular to overtake production in the next decade, particularly given 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 produced.

In such a circumstance, additives and alternatives such as biofuels will play an ever-increasing role by stretching beleaguered production quotas. As market forces and increasing prices drive this technology to the leading edge, among the wealthiest possible production locations has actually been absolutely overlooked by financiers up to now – Central Asia. Formerly the USSR’s cotton “plantation,” the region is poised to end up being a significant player in the production of biofuels if adequate foreign investment can be obtained. Unlike Brazil, where biofuel is manufactured largely from sugarcane, or the United States, where it is primarily 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 costs, while Turkmenistan is waiting in the wings as an increasing producer of natural gas.

Farther to the east, in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, geographical isolation and relatively little hydrocarbon resources relative to their Western Caspian neighbors have actually largely prevented their capability to capitalize increasing worldwide energy needs up to now. Mountainous Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan remain mostly dependent for their electrical needs on their Soviet-era hydroelectric facilities, but their heightened requirement to create winter season electricity has resulted in autumnal and winter season water discharges, in turn severely impacting the agriculture of their western downstream neighbors Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.

What these 3 downstream nations do have nevertheless 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 ended up being a significant manufacturer of wheat. Based upon my discussions with Central Asian government authorities, given the thirsty needs of cotton monoculture, foreign propositions to diversify agrarian production towards biofuel would have great appeal in Astana, Ashgabat and Tashkent and to a lesser degree Astana for those sturdy financiers happy to bank on the future, specifically as a plant native to the area has actually 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 a number of European and American business already investigating how to produce it in business amounts for biofuel. In January Japan Airlines undertook a historical test flight utilizing camelina-based bio-jet fuel, ending up being the 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 culmination of a 12-month assessment of camelina’s operational efficiency ability and prospective business viability.

As an alternative energy source, camelina has much to advise 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 utilized as a rotation crop with wheat, which would make it of specific interest in Kazakhstan, now Central Asia’s major wheat exporter. Another bonus offer 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 load (1000 kg) of camelina will include 350 kg of oil, of which pressing can extract 250 kg. Nothing in camelina production is wasted as after processing, the plant’s debris can be utilized for animals silage. Camelina silage has an especially attractive concentration of omega-3 fats that make it an especially great animals feed candidate that is recently 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 a perfect 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 new crop on the scene: archaeological proof shows it has been cultivated in Europe for a minimum of 3 millennia to produce both vegetable oil and animal fodder.

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

Camelina’s potential might permit Uzbekistan to begin breaking out of its most dolorous legacy, the imposition of a cotton monoculture that has deformed the country’s attempts at agrarian reform since achieving independence 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 industry. The was sped up under the Soviets. While Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan were also purchased 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-sufficient in cotton; five decades later it had become 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 stays 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 income.

Beginning in the mid-1960s the Soviet government’s regulations 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 planners to divert ever-increasing volumes of water from the area’s 2 main rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, into inefficient irrigation canals, leading to the significant shrinking of the rivers’ last destination, the Aral Sea. The Aral, once the world’s fourth-largest inland sea with an area of 26,000 square miles, has diminished to one-quarter its initial size in among the 20th century’s worst eco-friendly 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 generate $224 per acre; 28-bushel white wheat at $8.23 per bushel would amass $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 investment. U.S. investors have the cash and access to the competence of America’s land grant universities. What is specific is that biofuel‘s market share will grow over time; less specific is who will reap the benefits of developing it as a practical issue in Central Asia.

If the current past is anything to go by it is unlikely 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 academic competence, if they are prepared to follow the Silk Road into developing a new market. Certainly anything that decreases water use and pesticides, diversifies crop production and enhances the lot of their agrarian population will get most careful consideration from Central Asia’s governments, and farming and veggie oil processing plants are not only much cheaper than pipelines, they can be built more rapidly.

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