Central Asia’s Vast Biofuel Opportunity

The recent revelations of a International Energy Administration whistleblower that the IEA might 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 pressing the IEA to underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the possibilities of discovering brand-new reserves have the possible to toss governments’ long-lasting preparation into chaos.

Whatever the reality, increasing long term international demands seem specific to overtake production in the next years, particularly offered the high and increasing expenses of establishing new super-fields such as Kazakhstan’s offshore 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, ingredients and substitutes such as biofuels will play an ever-increasing role by extending beleaguered production quotas. As market forces and increasing prices drive this technology to the leading edge, one of the wealthiest possible production locations has actually been absolutely neglected by financiers up to now – Central Asia. Formerly the USSR’s cotton “plantation,” the region is poised to become a major player in the production of biofuels if enough foreign financial investment can be procured. Unlike Brazil, where biofuel is produced mostly from sugarcane, or the United States, where it is mainly 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 because of record-high energy prices, while Turkmenistan is waiting in the wings as an increasing producer of gas.

Farther to the east, in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, geographical isolation and relatively little hydrocarbon resources relative to their Western Caspian neighbors have actually largely prevented their ability to capitalize increasing international energy demands already. Mountainous and Tajikistan remain largely reliant for their electrical requirements on their Soviet-era hydroelectric facilities, but their heightened requirement to create winter electrical power has actually led to 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 three downstream nations do have nevertheless 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 actually ended up being a major manufacturer of wheat. Based upon my conversations with Central Asian government officials, provided 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 lesser extent Astana for those sturdy financiers happy to bank on the future, especially as a plant native 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 attracting increased clinical interest for its oleaginous qualities, with numerous European and American business currently examining how to produce it in industrial amounts for biofuel. In January Japan Airlines undertook a historic test flight utilizing camelina-based bio-jet fuel, becoming the first Asian provider to try out flying on fuel stemmed from sustainable feedstocks throughout a one-hour demonstration flight from Tokyo’s Haneda Airport. The test was the conclusion of a 12-month assessment of camelina’s functional efficiency capability and possible business viability.

As an alternative energy source, camelina has much to suggest it. It has a high oil content low in hydrogenated 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 particular interest in Kazakhstan, now Central Asia’s major wheat exporter. Another perk 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 include 350 kg of oil, of which pushing can extract 250 kg. Nothing in camelina production is squandered as after processing, the plant’s debris can be used for animals silage. Camelina silage has a particularly appealing concentration of omega-3 fatty acids that make it a particularly fine livestock feed candidate that is recently getting acknowledgment in the U.S. and Canada. Camelina is quick 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 could be an ideal 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 indigenous to both Europe and Central Asia and barely a new crop on the scene: archaeological evidence shows it has actually been cultivated in Europe for a minimum of three millennia to produce both veggie oil and animal fodder.

Field trials of production in Montana, currently the center of U.S. camelina research, showed a vast array of outcomes of 330-1,700 pounds of seed per acre, with oil content differing in between 29 and 40%. Optimal seeding rates have 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 density of around 9 plants per sq. ft.

Camelina’s potential might enable Uzbekistan to start breaking out of its most dolorous legacy, the imposition of a cotton monoculture that has deformed the nation’s attempts at agrarian reform given that attaining 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 procedure was sped up under the Soviets. While Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan were likewise bought 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 become self-dependent in cotton; five years later it had actually 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 might to diversify, in the lack of options Tashkent remains wedded to cotton, producing about 3.6 million loads each year, which generates more than $1 billion while making up approximately 60 percent of the country’s hard currency earnings.

Beginning in the mid-1960s the Soviet federal government’s regulations for Central Asian cotton production mostly bankrupted the area’s scarcest resource, water. Cotton uses 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 two primary rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, into inefficient watering canals, leading to the remarkable shrinkage of the rivers’ last 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 original size in one of the 20th century’s worst environmental catastrophes.

And now, the dollars and cents. Dr. Bill Schillinger at Washington State University just recently explained camelina’s service model 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 gather $230.”

Central Asia has the land, the farms, the irrigation infrastructure and a modest wage scale in comparison to America or Europe – all that’s missing is the foreign investment. U.S. financiers have the money and access to the proficiency of America’s land grant universities. What is particular is that biofuel’s market share will grow in time; less certain is who will profit of developing it as a practical concern in Central Asia.

If the current past is anything to go by it is not likely to be American and European investors, 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 willing to follow the Silk Road into developing a new market. Certainly anything that reduces water usage and pesticides, diversifies crop production and enhances the great deal of their agrarian population will get most cautious consideration from Central Asia’s governments, and farming and veggie oil processing plants are not only much less expensive than pipelines, they can be developed quicker.

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