Central Asia’s Vast Biofuel Opportunity

The current discoveries of a International Energy Administration whistleblower that the IEA may have misshaped essential oil projections under extreme U.S. pressure is, if real (and whistleblowers rarely come forward to advance their professions), a slow-burning atomic explosion on future global oil production. The Bush administration’s actions in pushing the IEA to underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the possibilities of discovering new reserves have the prospective to throw governments’ long-term planning into turmoil.

Whatever the truth, increasing long term global needs appear specific to outstrip production in the next decade, especially given the high and increasing expenses of developing brand-new super-fields such as Kazakhstan’s offshore Kashagan and Brazil’s southern Atlantic Jupiter and Carioca fields, which will need billions in investments before their first barrels of oil are produced.

In such a circumstance, additives and substitutes such as biofuels will play an ever-increasing role by stretching beleaguered production quotas. As market forces and rising costs drive this innovation to the forefront, one of the wealthiest possible production areas has been absolutely ignored by investors 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 adequate foreign investment can be procured. 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 seen their economies boom due to the fact that of record-high energy rates, while Turkmenistan is waiting in the wings as a rising producer of natural gas.

Farther to the east, in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, geographical seclusion and reasonably scant hydrocarbon resources relative to their Western Caspian neighbors have actually mainly prevented their ability to cash in on increasing worldwide energy needs up to now. Mountainous Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan stay mostly dependent for their electrical needs on their Soviet-era hydroelectric infrastructure, but their heightened need to generate winter electrical energy has caused autumnal and winter water discharges, in turn severely affecting the agriculture of their western downstream neighbors Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.

What these three downstream nations do have nevertheless is a Soviet-era legacy of farming production, which in Uzbekistan’s and Turkmenistan case was largely directed towards cotton production, while Kazakhstan, starting in the 1950s with Khrushchev’s « Virgin Lands » programs, has actually ended up being a major manufacturer of wheat. Based on my discussions with Central Asian government authorities, given the thirsty needs of cotton monoculture, foreign proposals to diversify agrarian production towards biofuel would have fantastic appeal in Astana, Ashgabat and Tashkent and to a lesser degree Astana for those durable financiers ready to bank on the future, specifically as a plant to the area has actually currently 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 business currently examining how to produce it in industrial quantities for biofuel. In January Japan Airlines undertook a historic test flight using camelina-based bio-jet fuel, becoming the first Asian provider to try out flying on fuel stemmed 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 commercial practicality.

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 immune to spring freezing, requires less fertilizer and herbicides, and can be utilized as a rotation crop with wheat, which would make it of specific 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 sown with camelina can produce up to 100 gallons of oil and when planted in rotation with wheat, camelina can increase wheat production by 15 percent. A load (1000 kg) of camelina will contain 350 kg of oil, of which pressing can draw out 250 kg. Nothing in camelina production is lost as after processing, the plant’s debris can be utilized for livestock silage. Camelina silage has an especially attractive concentration of omega-3 fatty acids that make it a particularly fine livestock feed prospect that is simply now gaining recognition in the U.S. and Canada. Camelina is fast 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 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 family, is indigenous to both Europe and Central Asia and barely a new crop on the scene: historical evidence shows it has been cultivated in Europe for at least 3 centuries to produce both veggie oil and animal fodder.

Field trials of production in Montana, currently the center of U.S. camelina research, revealed a large range of outcomes of 330-1,700 lbs of seed per acre, with oil material varying between 29 and 40%. Optimal seeding rates have been identified to be in the 6-8 pound per acre variety, as the seeds’ little size of 400,000 seeds per pound can develop problems in germination to accomplish an ideal plant density of around 9 plants per sq. ft.

Camelina’s capacity could permit Uzbekistan to start breaking out of its most dolorous legacy, the imposition of a cotton monoculture that has distorted the nation’s efforts at agrarian reform because accomplishing self-reliance in 1991. Beginning in the late 19th century, the Russian 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 also 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 actually ended up being self-dependent in cotton; 5 years later on it had ended up being a significant 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 lack of options Tashkent stays wedded to cotton, producing about 3.6 million loads every year, which brings in more than $1 billion while constituting around 60 percent of the nation’s hard currency income.

Beginning in the mid-1960s the Soviet government’s regulations 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 area’s 2 primary rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, into ineffective watering canals, resulting in the remarkable shrinkage of the rivers’ final location, the Aral Sea. The Aral, as soon as the world’s fourth-largest inland sea with an area of 26,000 square miles, has shrunk to one-quarter its initial size in one of the 20th century’s worst eco-friendly catastrophes.

And now, the dollars and cents. Dr. Bill Schillinger at Washington State University just recently explained camelina’s business 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 irrigation 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 money and access to the know-how of America’s land grant universities. What is certain is that biofuel’s market share will grow gradually; less specific is who will reap the benefits of establishing it as a viable issue in Central Asia.

If the current past is anything to pass 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 knowledge, if they are willing to follow the Silk Road into developing a new market. Certainly anything that lessens water usage and pesticides, diversifies crop production and improves the lot of their agrarian population will receive most careful factor to consider from Central Asia’s federal governments, and farming and veggie oil processing plants are not only much more affordable than pipelines, they can be constructed faster.

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