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Central Asia’s Vast Biofuel Opportunity

The current discoveries of a International Energy Administration whistleblower that the IEA may have distorted 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 pushing the IEA to underplay the rate of decrease from existing oil fields while overplaying the opportunities of finding brand-new reserves have the potential to throw governments’ long-lasting preparation into turmoil.

Whatever the truth, increasing long term international needs appear certain to overtake production in the next years, specifically offered the high and rising costs of establishing new super-fields such as Kazakhstan’s offshore Kashagan and Brazil’s southern Atlantic Jupiter and Carioca fields, which will require billions in investments before their very first barrels of oil are produced.

In such a situation, ingredients and alternatives such as biofuels will play an ever-increasing function by extending beleaguered production quotas. As market forces and rising costs drive this innovation to the forefront, among the richest prospective production locations has actually been completely overlooked by investors 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 procured. Unlike Brazil, where biofuel is made mostly 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 producer of gas.

Farther to the east, in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, geographical isolation and fairly scant hydrocarbon resources relative to their Western Caspian next-door neighbors have actually mostly inhibited their to money in on increasing international energy demands already. Mountainous Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan remain largely dependent for their electrical requirements on their Soviet-era hydroelectric infrastructure, however their increased need to generate winter electrical energy has actually caused autumnal and winter water discharges, in turn seriously affecting the agriculture of their western downstream next-door neighbors Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.

What these three downstream nations 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 ended up being a major producer of wheat. Based upon my conversations with Central Asian government officials, offered 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 level Astana for those durable financiers prepared to bank on the future, particularly as a plant native to the area has actually 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 scientific interest for its oleaginous qualities, with a number of European and American companies already examining how to produce it in commercial amounts for biofuel. In January Japan Airlines carried out a historical test flight using camelina-based bio-jet fuel, ending up being the very 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 assessment of camelina’s functional performance capability and prospective industrial viability.

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 unsusceptible 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 major 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 load (1000 kg) of camelina will consist of 350 kg of oil, of which pressing can extract 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 great animals feed candidate that is recently acquiring 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 established. According to Britain’s Bangor University’s Centre for Alternative Land Use, “Camelina could 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 shows it has been cultivated in Europe for at least three millennia to produce both grease and animal fodder.

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

Camelina’s capacity might enable Uzbekistan to begin breaking out of its most dolorous tradition, the imposition of a cotton monoculture that has deformed the nation’s efforts at agrarian reform considering that achieving self-reliance in 1991. Beginning in the late 19th century, the Russian government figured out that Central Asia would become its cotton plantation to feed Moscow’s growing fabric industry. The procedure was sped up under the Soviets. While Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan were likewise bought by Moscow to sow cotton, Uzbekistan in particular was singled out to produce “white gold.”

By the end of the 1930s the Soviet Union had actually become self-dependent in cotton; five years later it had 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 might to diversify, in the lack of options Tashkent remains wedded to cotton, producing about 3.6 million tons yearly, which brings in more than $1 billion while making up around 60 percent of the nation’s hard cash earnings.

Beginning in the mid-1960s the Soviet federal government’s directives 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 planners to divert ever-increasing volumes of water from the area’s 2 main rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, into inefficient irrigation canals, leading to the significant shrinkage of the rivers’ last 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 eco-friendly catastrophes.

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 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 irrigation facilities and a modest wage scale in comparison to America or Europe – all that’s missing out on is the foreign investment. U.S. financiers have the cash and access to the know-how of America’s land grant universities. What is particular is that biofuel‘s market share will grow gradually; less specific is who will enjoy 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, fixated as they are on Caspian oil and gas.

But while the Japanese flight experiments show 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 enhances the great deal of their agrarian population will receive most cautious factor to consider from Central Asia’s federal governments, and farming and veggie oil processing plants are not just much cheaper than pipelines, they can be constructed quicker.

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