Central Asia’s Vast Biofuel Opportunity

The current discoveries of a International Energy Administration whistleblower that the IEA may have distorted essential oil projections under extreme U.S. pressure is, if real (and whistleblowers seldom come forward to advance their professions), a slow-burning atomic explosion on future worldwide oil production. The Bush administration’s actions in pressing the IEA to underplay the rate of decrease from existing oil fields while overplaying the chances of finding brand-new reserves have the potential to throw federal governments’ long-term planning into chaos.

Whatever the truth, increasing long term worldwide needs appear specific to overtake production in the next years, particularly offered the high and rising costs of establishing new super-fields such as Kazakhstan’s overseas 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, additives and substitutes such as biofuels will play an ever-increasing role by stretching beleaguered production quotas. As market forces and rising prices drive this innovation to the leading edge, one of the richest possible production areas has actually been totally neglected by financiers already – Central Asia. Formerly the USSR’s cotton “plantation,” the region is poised to end up being a significant gamer in the production of biofuels if adequate foreign investment can be obtained. Unlike Brazil, where biofuel is made mostly from sugarcane, or the United States, where it is primarily 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 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 isolation and relatively scant hydrocarbon resources relative to their Western Caspian next-door neighbors have actually mostly prevented their capability to cash in on rising global energy demands up to now. Mountainous Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan stay mainly reliant for their electrical needs on their Soviet-era hydroelectric infrastructure, however their heightened requirement to produce winter season electrical energy has actually led to autumnal and winter water discharges, in turn badly affecting the farming of their western downstream next-door neighbors Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.

What these 3 downstream nations do have nevertheless is a Soviet-era tradition 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 ended up being a major producer of wheat. Based upon my discussions with Central Asian government authorities, offered the thirsty needs of cotton monoculture, foreign propositions to diversify agrarian production towards biofuel would have excellent appeal in Astana, Ashgabat and Tashkent and to a lower extent Astana for those durable financiers willing to bet on the future, particularly as a plant native to the region 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 attracting increased clinical interest for its oleaginous qualities, with numerous European and American companies currently examining how to produce it in commercial 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 derived from sustainable feedstocks throughout a one-hour demonstration flight from Tokyo’s Haneda Airport. The test was the culmination of a 12-month examination of camelina’s functional performance ability and potential 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 unsusceptible to spring freezing, requires 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 perk 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 ton (1000 kg) of camelina will contain 350 kg of oil, of which pressing can draw out 250 kg. Nothing in camelina production is wasted as after processing, the plant’s debris can be used for animals silage. Camelina silage has a particularly appealing concentration of omega-3 fats that make it a particularly fine animals feed prospect that is recently acquiring recognition in the U.S. and Canada. Camelina is fast 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 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 brand-new crop on the scene: archaeological proof indicates 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. research, revealed a vast array of outcomes of 330-1,700 pounds 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 pound can create issues in germination to accomplish an optimum plant density of around 9 plants per sq. ft.

Camelina’s potential could permit Uzbekistan to start breaking out of its most dolorous legacy, the imposition of a cotton monoculture that has distorted the country’s attempts at agrarian reform since achieving self-reliance 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 procedure was accelerated under the Soviets. While Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan were likewise bought 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-dependent in cotton; 5 decades later it had actually 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 lack of options Tashkent stays wedded to cotton, producing about 3.6 million heaps each year, which generates more than $1 billion while constituting approximately 60 percent of the country’s hard currency 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 utilizes about 3.5 acre feet of water per acre of plants, leading Soviet coordinators to divert ever-increasing volumes of water from the region’s 2 primary rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, into ineffective watering canals, resulting in the significant shrinking 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 shrunk to one-quarter its original 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 comparison to America or Europe – all that’s missing is the foreign investment. U.S. investors have the cash and access to the proficiency of America’s land grant universities. What is specific is that biofuel‘s market share will grow gradually; less particular is who will profit of establishing it as a viable issue in Central Asia.

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

But while the Japanese flight experiments show Asian interest, American financiers have the scholastic competence, if they want to follow the Silk Road into establishing a new market. Certainly anything that lessens water usage and pesticides, diversifies crop production and improves the great deal of their agrarian population will get most cautious factor to consider from Central Asia’s federal governments, and farming and vegetable oil processing plants are not just much less expensive than pipelines, they can be built more quickly.

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