Central Asia’s Vast Biofuel Opportunity

The recent discoveries of a International Energy Administration whistleblower that the IEA may have misshaped crucial oil forecasts under intense U.S. pressure is, if real (and whistleblowers seldom come forward to advance their careers), a slow-burning atomic explosion on future international 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 brand-new reserves have the prospective to throw governments’ long-lasting planning into chaos.

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

In such a situation, ingredients and substitutes 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, among the richest possible production locations has been absolutely ignored 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 enough foreign investment can be obtained. Unlike Brazil, where biofuel is manufactured largely from sugarcane, or the United States, where it is mainly distilled from corn, Central Asia’s ace resource is a native plant, Camelina sativa.

Of the former 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 prices, while Turkmenistan is waiting in the wings as a rising producer of natural gas.

Farther to the east, in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, geographical isolation and reasonably little hydrocarbon resources relative to their Western Caspian neighbors have mainly hindered their capability to capitalize rising international energy needs already. Mountainous Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan remain largely reliant for their electrical requirements on their Soviet-era hydroelectric facilities, but their heightened need to produce winter season electrical power has actually caused autumnal and winter season water discharges, in turn seriously affecting 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 tradition of agricultural 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 become a major producer of wheat. Based upon my conversations with Central Asian government officials, offered the thirsty demands of cotton monoculture, foreign propositions to diversify agrarian production towards biofuel would have great appeal in Astana, Ashgabat and Tashkent and to a lower level Astana for those sturdy financiers prepared to wager on the future, especially as a plant native to the region has actually currently 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 clinical interest for its oleaginous qualities, with a number of European and American companies currently examining how to produce it in commercial amounts for biofuel. In January Japan Airlines carried out a historical test flight using camelina-based bio-jet fuel, ending up being the first Asian provider to experiment with flying on fuel derived from sustainable feedstocks throughout a one-hour presentation flight from Tokyo’s Haneda Airport. The test was the conclusion of a 12-month examination of camelina’s functional performance ability and possible industrial viability.

As an alternative energy source, camelina has much to recommend 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 immune to spring freezing, requires less fertilizer and herbicides, and can be used as a rotation crop with wheat, which would make it of specific interest in Kazakhstan, now Central Asia’s major wheat exporter. Another reward 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 heap (1000 kg) of camelina will include 350 kg of oil, of which pushing can draw out 250 kg. Nothing in camelina production is squandered as after processing, the plant’s debris can be utilized for animals silage. Camelina silage has an especially attractive concentration of omega-3 fatty acids that make it a particularly fine animals feed prospect that is simply now getting acknowledgment in the U.S. and Canada. Camelina is quick growing, produces its own natural herbicide (allelopathy) and contends well versus 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 appropriate for bio-diesel production, due to its lower requirements for nitrogen fertilizer than oilseed rape.”

Camelina, a branch of the mustard household, is native to both Europe and Central Asia and hardly a brand-new crop on the scene: shows it has been cultivated in Europe for at least 3 centuries to produce both grease 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 pounds of seed per acre, with oil content varying in between 29 and 40%. Optimal seeding rates have actually been determined to be in the 6-8 lb per acre variety, as the seeds’ little size of 400,000 seeds per lb can produce issues in germination to achieve an optimum plant density of around 9 plants per sq. ft.

Camelina’s potential might allow Uzbekistan to start breaking out of its most dolorous tradition, the imposition of a cotton monoculture that has distorted the country’s attempts at agrarian reform since attaining self-reliance in 1991. Beginning in the late 19th century, the Russian government figured out that Central Asia would become its cotton plantation to feed Moscow’s growing textile market. The process was sped up under the Soviets. While Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan were likewise purchased 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 ended up being self-sufficient in cotton; 5 years later on it had ended up being 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 may to diversify, in the absence of options Tashkent stays wedded to cotton, producing about 3.6 million loads yearly, which generates more than $1 billion while making up around 60 percent of the nation’s difficult currency income.

Beginning in the mid-1960s the Soviet federal government’s instructions for Central Asian cotton production largely 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 region’s two main rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, into ineffective watering canals, leading to the significant shrinkage of the rivers’ final location, the Aral Sea. The Aral, when the world’s fourth-largest inland sea with a location of 26,000 square miles, has actually diminished to one-quarter its initial size in among the 20th century’s worst environmental 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 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 watering infrastructure and a modest wage scale in contrast to America or Europe – all that’s missing out on is the foreign financial investment. U.S. financiers have the cash and access to the know-how of America’s land grant universities. What is particular is that biofuel’s market share will grow in time; less specific is who will profit of developing it as a feasible issue in Central Asia.

If the current past is anything to go by it is unlikely to be American and European financiers, fixated as they are on Caspian oil and gas.

But while the Japanese flight experiments show Asian interest, American investors have the scholastic expertise, if they are ready to follow the Silk Road into establishing a new market. Certainly anything that minimizes water use and pesticides, diversifies crop production and improves the great deal of their agrarian population will get most cautious consideration from Central Asia’s federal governments, and farming and grease processing plants are not only more affordable than pipelines, they can be built faster.

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