Central Asia’s Vast Biofuel Opportunity

The recent revelations of a International Energy Administration whistleblower that the IEA might have distorted crucial oil forecasts under intense U.S. pressure is, if real (and whistleblowers hardly ever step forward to advance their professions), a slow-burning atomic 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 chances of discovering brand-new reserves have the prospective to toss governments’ long-lasting planning into chaos.

Whatever the reality, increasing long term global needs seem particular to overtake production in the next decade, specifically given the high and rising expenses 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 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 technology to the forefront, among the richest prospective production locations has actually been completely ignored by financiers already – Central Asia. Formerly the USSR’s cotton “plantation,” the area is poised to become a major player in the production of biofuels if enough foreign financial investment can be obtained. Unlike Brazil, where biofuel is produced mainly 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 seen their economies boom because of record-high energy costs, while Turkmenistan is waiting in the wings as an increasing manufacturer of natural gas.

Farther to the east, in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, geographical isolation and fairly scant hydrocarbon resources relative to their Western Caspian neighbors have largely prevented their capability to capitalize rising worldwide energy needs already. Mountainous Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan stay largely reliant for their electrical requirements on their Soviet-era hydroelectric facilities, but their increased requirement to generate winter season electrical energy has actually caused autumnal and winter season water discharges, in turn seriously affecting the agriculture of their western downstream next-door neighbors Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.

What these 3 downstream countries do have however is a Soviet-era legacy of agricultural production, which in Uzbekistan’s and Turkmenistan case was mostly directed towards cotton production, while Kazakhstan, beginning in the 1950s with Khrushchev’s “Virgin Lands” programs, has actually become a significant manufacturer of wheat. Based on 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 lower level Astana for those sturdy financiers willing to bank on the future, specifically as a plant native to the area has already shown itself in trials.

Known in the West as incorrect flax, wild flax, linseed dodder, German sesame and Siberian oilseed, camelina is attracting increased clinical interest for its oleaginous qualities, with a number of European and American business currently examining how to produce it in business amounts for biofuel. In January Japan Airlines carried out a historic test flight utilizing bio-jet fuel, becoming the first Asian carrier to try out flying on fuel originated 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 ability and prospective business practicality.

As an alternative energy source, camelina has much to suggest it. It has a high oil content low in saturated fat. In contrast to Central Asia’s thirsty “king cotton,” camelina is drought-resistant and unsusceptible to spring freezing, needs 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 major wheat exporter. Another benefit 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 load (1000 kg) of camelina will include 350 kg of oil, of which pushing can extract 250 kg. Nothing in camelina production is wasted as after processing, the plant’s debris can be used for livestock silage. Camelina silage has an especially attractive concentration of omega-3 fatty acids that make it an especially great animals feed candidate that is recently getting acknowledgment in the U.S. and Canada. Camelina is quick growing, produces its own natural herbicide (allelopathy) and contends well against 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 ideal 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 proof indicates it has been cultivated in Europe for a minimum of 3 centuries to produce both grease and animal fodder.

Field trials of production in Montana, presently the center of U.S. camelina research, showed a large variety of results of 330-1,700 pounds of seed per acre, with oil material differing 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 produce issues in germination to attain an optimal plant density of around 9 plants per sq. ft.

Camelina’s potential might enable Uzbekistan to begin breaking out of its most dolorous tradition, the imposition of a cotton monoculture that has distorted the country’s efforts at agrarian reform since attaining independence 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 textile industry. The procedure was sped up under the Soviets. While Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan were also bought 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-dependent in cotton; 5 decades later on it had 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 alternatives Tashkent remains wedded to cotton, producing about 3.6 million tons each year, which generates more than $1 billion while constituting roughly 60 percent of the nation’s hard cash earnings.

Beginning in the mid-1960s the Soviet federal government’s regulations for Central Asian cotton production mostly 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 main rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, into ineffective watering canals, resulting in the remarkable shrinkage of the rivers’ final destination, the Aral Sea. The Aral, as soon as 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 recently described camelina’s organization 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 facilities and a modest wage scale in comparison to America or Europe – all that’s missing is the foreign financial investment. U.S. financiers have the cash and access to the know-how of America’s land grant universities. What is specific is that biofuel’s market share will grow with time; less specific is who will profit of developing it as a viable issue in Central Asia.

If the recent 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 suggest Asian interest, American investors have the scholastic know-how, if they want to follow the Silk Road into establishing a new market. Certainly anything that minimizes water usage and pesticides, diversifies crop production and improves the lot of their agrarian population will receive most cautious consideration from Central Asia’s federal governments, and farming and grease processing plants are not just much less expensive than pipelines, they can be built more rapidly.

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