Central Asia’s Vast Biofuel Opportunity

The recent revelations of a International Energy Administration whistleblower that the IEA may have misshaped key oil projections under intense U.S. pressure is, if real (and whistleblowers rarely come forward to advance their professions), a slow-burning thermonuclear explosion on future worldwide oil production. The Bush administration’s actions in pressing the IEA to underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the chances of finding brand-new reserves have the possible to toss governments’ long-term preparation into turmoil.

Whatever the truth, rising long term worldwide needs seem certain to overtake production in the next decade, especially given 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 require billions in financial investments before their very first barrels of oil are produced.

In such a scenario, ingredients and replacements such as biofuels will play an ever-increasing function by extending beleaguered production quotas. As market forces and rising rates drive this innovation to the forefront, among the richest potential production areas has been totally neglected 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 obtained. Unlike Brazil, where biofuel is made largely from sugarcane, or the United States, where it is mostly 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 actually seen their economies boom because of record-high energy rates, while Turkmenistan is waiting in the wings as a rising manufacturer 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 mainly inhibited their ability to cash in on rising international energy demands already. Mountainous Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan stay largely dependent for their electrical needs on their Soviet-era hydroelectric infrastructure, however their increased requirement to generate winter electrical energy has caused autumnal and winter discharges, in turn seriously affecting the agriculture of their western downstream next-door neighbors Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.

What these three downstream countries 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, provided the thirsty needs of cotton monoculture, foreign proposals to diversify agrarian production towards biofuel would have great appeal in Astana, Ashgabat and Tashkent and to a lower degree Astana for those durable financiers going to bank on the future, specifically as a plant indigenous to the area has currently proven itself in trials.

Known in the West as false flax, wild flax, linseed dodder, German sesame and Siberian oilseed, camelina is drawing in increased clinical interest for its oleaginous qualities, with a number of European and American business already investigating how to produce it in industrial quantities for biofuel. In January Japan Airlines undertook a historical test flight utilizing camelina-based bio-jet fuel, ending up being the first Asian carrier to explore flying on fuel derived from sustainable feedstocks during a one-hour presentation flight from Tokyo’s Haneda Airport. The test was the conclusion of a 12-month examination of camelina’s functional performance capability and prospective industrial viability.

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 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 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 ton (1000 kg) of camelina will contain 350 kg of oil, of which pushing can extract 250 kg. Nothing in camelina production is lost as after processing, the plant’s particles can be used for livestock silage. Camelina silage has a particularly appealing concentration of omega-3 fatty acids that make it an especially fine livestock 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 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 appropriate 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 hardly a new crop on the scene: historical proof suggests 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 study, revealed a vast array of results of 330-1,700 lbs of seed per acre, with oil material differing in between 29 and 40%. Optimal seeding rates have actually been identified to be in the 6-8 pound per acre range, 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 potential might allow Uzbekistan to start breaking out of its most dolorous legacy, the imposition of a cotton monoculture that has warped the country’s attempts at agrarian reform because attaining self-reliance in 1991. Beginning in the late 19th century, the Russian federal government determined that Central Asia would become its cotton plantation to feed Moscow’s growing textile market. The process 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 ended up being self-dependent in cotton; five decades later on it had ended up being a major exporter of cotton, producing more than one-fifth of the world’s production, concentrated in Uzbekistan, which produced 70 percent of the Soviet Union’s output.

Try as it may to diversify, in the absence of options Tashkent remains wedded to cotton, producing about 3.6 million tons annually, which generates more than $1 billion while making up around 60 percent of the country’s hard currency income.

Beginning in the mid-1960s the Soviet federal government’s directives for Central Asian cotton production mainly bankrupted the region’s scarcest resource, water. Cotton uses 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 two main rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, into inefficient watering canals, leading to the remarkable shrinking 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 shrunk to one-quarter its original 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 recently described camelina’s organization design 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 watering infrastructure and a modest wage scale in contrast to America or Europe – all that’s missing out on is the foreign investment. U.S. financiers have the money and access to the know-how of America’s land grant universities. What is particular is that biofuel’s market share will grow over time; less particular is who will profit of establishing it as a viable concern in Central Asia.

If the current past is anything to pass it is unlikely to be American and European investors, fixated as they are on Caspian oil and gas.

But while the Japanese flight experiments show Asian interest, American investors have the academic expertise, if they want to follow the Silk Road into establishing a brand-new market. Certainly anything that decreases water use and pesticides, diversifies crop production and improves the lot of their agrarian population will receive most mindful consideration from Central Asia’s governments, and farming and grease processing plants are not just much more affordable than pipelines, they can be developed more quickly.

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