Central Asia’s Vast Biofuel Opportunity

The recent revelations of a International Energy Administration whistleblower that the IEA might have distorted essential oil forecasts under intense U.S. pressure is, if true (and whistleblowers seldom step forward to advance their professions), a slow-burning thermonuclear 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 finding new reserves have the possible to throw governments’ long-term planning into turmoil.

Whatever the reality, rising long term worldwide needs appear certain to overtake production in the next years, especially offered the high and rising expenses of developing 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 very first barrels of oil are produced.

In such a scenario, ingredients and alternatives such as biofuels will play an ever-increasing function by extending beleaguered production quotas. As market forces and rising prices drive this technology to the leading edge, one of the richest possible production locations has actually been absolutely overlooked by investors already – Central Asia. Formerly the USSR’s cotton “plantation,” the area is poised to end up being a significant player in the production of biofuels if adequate foreign financial investment can be acquired. Unlike Brazil, where biofuel is made largely from sugarcane, or the United States, where it is mostly 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 shores of the Caspian, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan have seen their economies boom because of record-high energy prices, while Turkmenistan is waiting in the wings as an increasing manufacturer of gas.

Farther to the east, in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, geographical seclusion and relatively scant hydrocarbon resources relative to their Western Caspian neighbors have actually mainly hindered their capability to capitalize rising global energy needs already. Mountainous Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan remain mainly reliant for their electrical needs on their Soviet-era hydroelectric facilities, but their heightened requirement to create winter season electrical energy has caused 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 countries do have however 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 actually become a major producer of wheat. Based upon my conversations with Central Asian federal government authorities, given 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 lesser degree Astana for those hardy financiers ready to bank on the future, specifically as a plant indigenous to the region has currently shown itself in trials.

Known in the West as incorrect 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 currently investigating how to produce it in business quantities 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 during a one-hour demonstration flight from Tokyo’s Haneda Airport. The test was the conclusion of a 12-month examination of camelina’s functional efficiency capability and possible business practicality.

As an alternative energy source, camelina has much to recommend it. It has a high oil material low in hydrogenated fat. In 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 significant wheat exporter. Another reward 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 heap (1000 kg) of camelina will contain 350 kg of oil, of which pushing 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 attractive concentration of omega-3 fats that make it an especially fine livestock feed candidate that is just now getting recognition in the U.S. and Canada. Camelina is fast growing, produces its own natural herbicide (allelopathy) and competes well versus weeds when an even crop is established. According to Britain’s Bangor University’s Centre for Alternative Land Use, “Camelina might be a perfect low-input crop ideal 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 new crop on the scene: historical evidence suggests it has actually been cultivated in Europe for at least 3 millennia to produce both veggie oil and animal fodder.

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

Camelina’s potential might allow Uzbekistan to begin breaking out of its most dolorous legacy, the imposition of a cotton monoculture that has deformed the country’s efforts at agrarian reform given that attaining independence in 1991. Beginning in the late 19th century, the Russian federal government determined that Central Asia would become its cotton plantation to feed Moscow’s growing fabric industry. The process was sped up under the Soviets. While Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan were also purchased by Moscow to plant cotton, Uzbekistan in particular was singled out to produce “white gold.”

By the end of the 1930s the Soviet Union had actually ended up being self-sufficient in cotton; 5 decades later on it had actually become 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 alternatives Tashkent stays wedded to cotton, producing about 3.6 million loads yearly, which generates more than $1 billion while making up approximately 60 percent of the nation’s difficult currency earnings.

Beginning in the mid-1960s the Soviet federal government’s regulations 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 primary rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, into ineffective irrigation canals, resulting in the significant shrinkage of the rivers’ last destination, the Aral Sea. The Aral, as soon as the world’s fourth-largest inland sea with a location of 26,000 square miles, has actually diminished 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 recently explained camelina’s business 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 facilities and a modest wage scale in contrast to America or Europe – all that’s missing is the foreign financial investment. U.S. financiers 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 gradually; less certain is who will reap the advantages of developing it as a viable concern in Central Asia.

If the recent past is anything to go by 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 investors have the scholastic competence, if they want to follow the Silk Road into developing a new market. Certainly anything that reduces water use and pesticides, diversifies crop production and improves the lot of their agrarian population will receive most careful consideration from Central Asia’s governments, and farming and veggie oil processing plants are not only more affordable than pipelines, they can be built faster.

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