Central Asia’s Vast Biofuel Opportunity

The current discoveries of a International Energy Administration whistleblower that the IEA may have misshaped crucial oil projections under extreme U.S. pressure is, if true (and whistleblowers hardly ever step forward to advance their professions), 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 opportunities of finding brand-new reserves have the prospective to throw governments’ long-lasting planning into turmoil.

Whatever the reality, rising long term global demands appear certain to outstrip production in the next years, especially provided the high and increasing expenses of establishing new super-fields such as Kazakhstan’s overseas Kashagan and Brazil’s southern Atlantic Jupiter and Carioca fields, which will need 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 extending beleaguered production quotas. As market forces and increasing prices drive this innovation to the leading edge, one of the richest possible production locations has actually been completely overlooked by financiers up to now – Central Asia. Formerly the USSR’s cotton « plantation, » the region is poised to become a significant player in the production of biofuels if adequate foreign investment can be obtained. Unlike Brazil, where biofuel is produced 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 former Soviet Caucasian and Central Asian republics, those clustered around the shores of the Caspian, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan have actually seen their economies boom because of record-high energy costs, while Turkmenistan is waiting in the wings as a rising manufacturer of natural gas.

Farther to the east, in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, geographical isolation and fairly little hydrocarbon resources relative to their Western Caspian next-door neighbors have mostly inhibited their capability to capitalize increasing international energy needs already. Mountainous Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan remain largely dependent for their electrical needs on their Soviet-era hydroelectric facilities, however their increased need to create winter electrical energy has led to autumnal and winter season water discharges, in turn severely affecting the agriculture of their western downstream neighbors Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.

What these 3 downstream nations do have nevertheless is a Soviet-era legacy of agricultural production, which in Uzbekistan’s and Turkmenistan case was largely directed towards cotton production, while Kazakhstan, beginning in the 1950s with Khrushchev’s « Virgin Lands » programs, has actually become a significant producer of wheat. Based upon my conversations with Central Asian federal government authorities, given the thirsty needs of cotton monoculture, foreign proposals to diversify agrarian production towards biofuel would have excellent appeal in Astana, Ashgabat and Tashkent and to a lower degree Astana for those hardy investors happy to bank on the future, specifically as a plant native to the area has actually already proven 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 a number of European and American business already examining how to produce it in business amounts for biofuel. In January Japan Airlines undertook a historic test flight utilizing camelina-based bio-jet fuel, ending up being the first Asian carrier to explore flying on fuel originated from sustainable feedstocks throughout a one-hour presentation flight from Tokyo’s Haneda Airport. The test was the culmination of a 12-month assessment of camelina’s functional efficiency capability and possible business viability.

As an alternative energy source, camelina has much to recommend it. It has a high oil material low in hydrogenated fat. In contrast to Central Asia’s thirsty « king cotton, » camelina is drought-resistant and immune 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 bonus offer of camelina is its tolerance of poorer, less fertile conditions. An acre planted 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 pressing can draw out 250 kg. Nothing in camelina production is wasted as after processing, the plant’s particles can be used for livestock silage. Camelina silage has a particularly attractive concentration of omega-3 fatty acids that make it a particularly fine livestock feed candidate that is simply now gaining acknowledgment in the U.S. and Canada. Camelina is quick growing, produces its own natural herbicide (allelopathy) and completes 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 suitable for bio-diesel production, due to its lower requirements for nitrogen fertilizer than oilseed rape. »

Camelina, a branch of the mustard family, is native to both Europe and Central Asia and barely a new crop on the scene: archaeological proof indicates it has actually been cultivated in Europe for at least 3 centuries to produce both grease and animal fodder.

Field trials of production in Montana, currently the center of U.S. camelina research study, revealed a wide variety 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 range, as the seeds’ little size of 400,000 seeds per lb can produce issues in germination to accomplish an ideal plant of around 9 plants per sq. ft.

Camelina’s capacity could permit Uzbekistan to begin breaking out of its most dolorous tradition, the imposition of a cotton monoculture that has distorted the nation’s attempts at agrarian reform because 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 market. The process was sped up under the Soviets. While Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan were likewise ordered 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 become self-sufficient in cotton; five years later on it had actually become 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 every year, which brings in more than $1 billion while making up approximately 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 region’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 primary rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, into ineffective irrigation canals, resulting in 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 original size in among the 20th century’s worst environmental disasters.

And now, the dollars and cents. Dr. Bill Schillinger at Washington State University just recently described camelina’s service design to Capital Press as: « At 1,400 pounds per acre at 16 cents a pound, camelina would generate $224 per acre; 28-bushel white wheat at $8.23 per bushel would amass $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. investors have the money and access to the proficiency of America’s land grant universities. What is specific is that biofuel’s market share will grow with time; less particular is who will gain the benefits of establishing it as a practical concern in Central Asia.

If the current past is anything to go by it is unlikely 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 academic competence, if they are prepared to follow the Silk Road into establishing a new market. Certainly anything that reduces water use and pesticides, diversifies crop production and enhances the lot of their agrarian population will get most mindful factor to consider from Central Asia’s governments, and farming and grease processing plants are not only more affordable than pipelines, they can be built quicker.

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