Central Asia’s Vast Biofuel Opportunity

The recent revelations of a International Energy Administration whistleblower that the IEA may have misshaped key oil projections under intense U.S. pressure is, if real (and whistleblowers seldom step forward to advance their careers), a slow-burning atomic explosion on future global oil production. The Bush administration’s actions in pressuring the IEA to underplay the rate of decrease from existing oil fields while overplaying the possibilities of finding new reserves have the prospective to toss federal governments’ long-lasting planning into mayhem.

Whatever the reality, rising long term global demands appear particular to outstrip production in the next years, especially offered the high and increasing costs of establishing new super-fields such as Kazakhstan’s offshore Kashagan and Brazil’s southern Atlantic Jupiter and fields, which will require billions in financial investments before their very first barrels of oil are produced.

In such a scenario, ingredients and alternatives such as biofuels will play an ever-increasing role by stretching beleaguered production quotas. As market forces and increasing costs drive this technology to the leading edge, one of the richest prospective production areas has 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 acquired. Unlike Brazil, where biofuel is made 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 seen their economies boom due to the fact that of record-high energy prices, 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 scant hydrocarbon resources relative to their Western Caspian neighbors have actually mainly inhibited their ability to capitalize rising global energy needs already. Mountainous Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan remain mostly dependent for their electrical requirements on their Soviet-era hydroelectric infrastructure, however their heightened need to generate winter season electricity has actually caused autumnal and winter season water discharges, in turn seriously affecting the farming of their western downstream neighbors Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.

What these 3 downstream countries do have nevertheless is a Soviet-era legacy of farming production, which in Uzbekistan’s and Turkmenistan case was mainly directed towards cotton production, while Kazakhstan, beginning in the 1950s with Khrushchev’s “Virgin Lands” programs, has actually become a major manufacturer of wheat. Based on my discussions with Central Asian government officials, offered 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 lesser degree Astana for those sturdy investors going to bet on the future, particularly as a plant native to the region has currently proven itself in trials.

Known in the West as false flax, wild flax, linseed dodder, German sesame and Siberian oilseed, camelina is drawing in increased scientific interest for its oleaginous qualities, with numerous European and American business already investigating how to produce it in industrial quantities for biofuel. In January Japan Airlines undertook a historic test flight using camelina-based bio-jet fuel, becoming the very first Asian provider to experiment with flying on fuel derived from sustainable feedstocks during a one-hour presentation flight from Tokyo’s Haneda Airport. The test was the culmination of a 12-month assessment of camelina’s functional performance ability and prospective industrial viability.

As an alternative energy source, camelina has much to suggest it. It has a high oil material low in saturated fat. In contrast to Central Asia’s thirsty “king cotton,” camelina is drought-resistant and unsusceptible to spring freezing, needs 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 benefit 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 pushing can draw out 250 kg. Nothing in camelina production is lost as after processing, the plant’s debris can be utilized for animals silage. Camelina silage has an especially appealing concentration of omega-3 fats that make it a particularly fine livestock feed candidate that is just now getting acknowledgment in the U.S. and Canada. Camelina is quick growing, produces its own natural herbicide (allelopathy) and completes well against weeds when an even crop is developed. 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 family, is indigenous to both Europe and Central Asia and hardly a new crop on the scene: archaeological proof indicates it has actually been cultivated in Europe for at least three millennia to produce both vegetable oil and animal fodder.

Field trials of production in Montana, currently the center of U.S. camelina research study, revealed a vast array of outcomes of 330-1,700 pounds of seed per acre, with oil material differing in between 29 and 40%. Optimal seeding rates have been determined to be in the 6-8 pound per acre variety, as the seeds’ little size of 400,000 seeds per pound can create problems in germination to attain an optimal plant density of around 9 plants per sq. ft.

Camelina’s capacity might enable Uzbekistan to start breaking out of its most dolorous legacy, the imposition of a cotton monoculture that has distorted the nation’s attempts at agrarian reform considering that achieving self-reliance 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 textile industry. The process was sped up under the Soviets. While Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan were likewise bought by Moscow to plant 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-dependent in cotton; five years 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 absence of options Tashkent remains wedded to cotton, producing about 3.6 million tons annually, which brings in more than $1 billion while constituting roughly 60 percent of the country’s difficult currency earnings.

Beginning in the mid-1960s the Soviet federal 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 organizers to divert ever-increasing volumes of water from the region’s two main 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, 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 one of the 20th century’s worst ecological disasters.

And now, the dollars and cents. Dr. Bill Schillinger at Washington State University recently explained camelina’s business model 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 contrast to America or Europe – all that’s missing out on is the foreign financial investment. U.S. investors have the money and access to the proficiency of America’s land grant universities. What is certain is that biofuel’s market share will grow in time; less specific is who will profit of establishing it as a viable issue in Central Asia.

If the current past is anything to pass 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 scholastic proficiency, if they are willing to follow the Silk Road into developing a brand-new market. Certainly anything that lessens water usage and pesticides, diversifies crop production and improves the lot of their agrarian population will receive most cautious consideration from Central Asia’s governments, and farming and vegetable oil processing plants are not just more affordable than pipelines, they can be built quicker.

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