
Mission Biofuels India Private Ltd
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Founded Date March 16, 2018
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Sectors AI (Artificial Intelligence)
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Company Description
Central Asia’s Vast Biofuel Opportunity
The current revelations of a International Energy Administration whistleblower that the IEA may have distorted essential oil forecasts under extreme U.S. pressure is, if real (and whistleblowers hardly ever come forward to advance their professions), a slow-burning thermonuclear surge 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 possibilities of finding brand-new reserves have the possible to throw federal governments’ long-term preparation into turmoil.
Whatever the truth, rising long term worldwide demands appear certain to overtake production in the next decade, particularly offered the high and increasing expenses of establishing brand-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 situation, additives and substitutes such as biofuels will play an ever-increasing function by stretching beleaguered production quotas. As market forces and increasing costs drive this technology to the forefront, one of the wealthiest potential production areas has actually been totally overlooked by investors 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 enough foreign financial investment can be obtained. Unlike Brazil, where biofuel is made mainly 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 due to the fact that 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 isolation and reasonably little hydrocarbon resources relative to their Western Caspian next-door neighbors have actually mostly prevented their capability to money in on rising global energy demands up to now. Mountainous Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan remain mostly dependent for their electrical needs on their Soviet-era hydroelectric facilities, but their increased requirement to create winter electrical energy has actually caused autumnal and winter season water discharges, in turn severely impacting the farming of their western downstream next-door neighbors Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.
What these 3 downstream nations 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, beginning in the 1950s with Khrushchev’s “Virgin Lands” programs, has actually become a major manufacturer of wheat. Based on my conversations with Central Asian government authorities, given the thirsty demands of cotton monoculture, foreign propositions to diversify agrarian production towards biofuel would have terrific appeal in Astana, Ashgabat and Tashkent and to a lower level Astana for those durable investors ready to bank on the future, especially as a plant indigenous to the area has actually already 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 clinical interest for its oleaginous qualities, with numerous European and American companies already investigating how to produce it in business amounts for biofuel. In January Japan Airlines carried out a historic test flight utilizing camelina-based bio-jet fuel, becoming the very first Asian provider to try out flying on fuel obtained from sustainable feedstocks throughout a one-hour demonstration flight from Tokyo’s Haneda Airport. The test was the culmination of a 12-month evaluation of camelina’s operational efficiency ability and possible business practicality.
As an alternative energy source, camelina has much to suggest 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, needs less fertilizer and herbicides, and can be used as a rotation crop with wheat, which would make it of particular 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 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 lot (1000 kg) of camelina will contain 350 kg of oil, of which pressing can draw out 250 kg. Nothing in camelina production is squandered as after processing, the plant’s particles can be used 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 recently gaining acknowledgment in the U.S. and Canada. Camelina is fast growing, produces its own natural herbicide (allelopathy) and contends well against weeds when an even crop is established. 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 household, is native to both Europe and Central Asia and barely a brand-new crop on the scene: historical proof 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 study, showed a large range of outcomes of 330-1,700 lbs of seed per acre, with oil content differing between 29 and 40%. Optimal seeding rates have been figured out to be in the 6-8 lb per acre variety, as the seeds’ small size of 400,000 seeds per pound can develop problems in germination to attain an optimum plant density of around 9 plants per sq. ft.
Camelina’s potential could permit Uzbekistan to begin breaking out of its most dolorous tradition, the imposition of a cotton monoculture that has deformed the nation’s efforts at agrarian reform since accomplishing independence 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 fabric industry. The process was accelerated under the Soviets. While Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan were likewise bought by Moscow to sow cotton, Uzbekistan in particular was singled out to produce “white gold.”
By the end of the 1930s the Soviet Union had become self-dependent in cotton; five 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 may to diversify, in the absence of alternatives Tashkent remains wedded to cotton, producing about 3.6 million lots every year, which brings in more than $1 billion while making up roughly 60 percent of the nation’s hard cash income.
Beginning in the mid-1960s the Soviet government’s instructions for Central Asian cotton production mainly bankrupted the area’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 region’s 2 main rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, into ineffective watering canals, resulting in the dramatic shrinkage of the rivers’ final destination, the Aral Sea. The Aral, once the world’s fourth-largest inland sea with a location of 26,000 square miles, has shrunk 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 just 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 garner $230.”
Central Asia has the land, the farms, the watering 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 cash and access to the competence of America’s land grant universities. What is certain is that biofuel‘s market share will grow over time; less certain is who will profit of establishing it as a viable concern 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 show Asian interest, American investors have the scholastic knowledge, if they are ready to follow the Silk Road into establishing a brand-new market. Certainly anything that lessens water use and pesticides, diversifies crop production and enhances the lot of their agrarian population will receive most careful consideration from Central Asia’s federal governments, and farming and grease processing plants are not only more affordable than pipelines, they can be constructed quicker.
And jatropha curcas‘s biofuel capacity? Another story for another time.