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Central Asia’s Vast Biofuel Opportunity
The recent discoveries of a International Energy Administration whistleblower that the IEA might have misshaped essential oil forecasts under intense U.S. pressure is, if true (and whistleblowers rarely come forward to advance their professions), a slow-burning atomic explosion on future worldwide oil production. The Bush administration’s actions in pressuring the IEA to underplay the rate of decrease from existing oil fields while overplaying the possibilities of discovering new reserves have the prospective to throw federal governments’ long-lasting preparation into chaos.
Whatever the truth, increasing long term global needs appear specific to outstrip production in the next decade, particularly provided the high and rising expenses of establishing brand-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 very first barrels of oil are produced.
In such a circumstance, additives and alternatives such as biofuels will play an ever-increasing function by stretching beleaguered production quotas. As market forces and rising rates drive this innovation to the forefront, one of the wealthiest possible production locations has actually been totally neglected by financiers up to now – Central Asia. Formerly the USSR’s cotton “plantation,” the area is poised to end up being a significant player in the production of biofuels if adequate foreign investment can be obtained. 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 former Soviet Caucasian and Central Asian republics, those clustered around the coasts of the Caspian, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan have actually seen their economies boom due to the fact that of record-high energy prices, while Turkmenistan is waiting in the wings as an increasing manufacturer of gas.
Farther to the east, in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, geographical seclusion and reasonably little hydrocarbon resources relative to their Western Caspian neighbors have mostly inhibited their capability to capitalize increasing international energy demands up to now. Mountainous Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan stay mostly dependent for their electrical needs on their Soviet-era hydroelectric infrastructure, however their heightened need to generate winter electrical power has actually led to autumnal and winter water discharges, in turn significantly impacting the farming of their western downstream neighbors Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.
What these 3 downstream countries do have however is a Soviet-era tradition of agricultural production, which in Uzbekistan’s and Turkmenistan case was mostly directed towards cotton production, while Kazakhstan, starting in the 1950s with Khrushchev’s “Virgin Lands” programs, has become a significant manufacturer of wheat. Based on my discussions with Central Asian federal government authorities, offered the thirsty demands of cotton monoculture, foreign proposals to diversify agrarian production towards biofuel would have great appeal in Astana, Ashgabat and Tashkent and to a lesser level Astana for those sturdy investors going to bank on the future, particularly as a plant native to the region has actually already shown 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 numerous European and American business already examining how to produce it in commercial amounts for biofuel. In January Japan Airlines carried out a historic test flight utilizing camelina-based bio-jet fuel, ending up being the very first Asian provider to with flying on fuel derived from sustainable feedstocks throughout a one-hour presentation flight from Tokyo’s Haneda Airport. The test was the conclusion of a 12-month assessment of camelina’s operational performance capability and potential commercial 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 immune to spring freezing, requires 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 reward 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 lot (1000 kg) of camelina will include 350 kg of oil, of which pushing can draw out 250 kg. Nothing in camelina production is squandered 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 a particularly great livestock feed candidate that is simply now gaining 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 might 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 household, is native to both Europe and Central Asia and hardly a new crop on the scene: archaeological proof indicates it has actually been cultivated in Europe for a minimum of 3 millennia to produce both veggie oil and animal fodder.
Field trials of production in Montana, currently the center of U.S. camelina research, revealed a vast array of results of 330-1,700 lbs of seed per acre, with oil content differing between 29 and 40%. Optimal seeding rates have actually been identified to be in the 6-8 lb per acre variety, as the seeds’ small size of 400,000 seeds per lb can develop problems in germination to accomplish an optimal plant density of around 9 plants per sq. ft.
Camelina’s capacity could allow Uzbekistan to start breaking out of its most dolorous legacy, the imposition of a cotton monoculture that has deformed the country’s attempts at agrarian reform because accomplishing independence in 1991. Beginning in the late 19th century, the Russian federal 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 purchased by Moscow to sow 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-sufficient in cotton; 5 years later it had ended up being a significant 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 lack of alternatives Tashkent stays wedded to cotton, producing about 3.6 million lots each year, which generates more than $1 billion while constituting approximately 60 percent of the country’s hard currency income.
Beginning in the mid-1960s the Soviet government’s regulations for Central Asian cotton production mainly bankrupted the area’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 region’s two primary rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, into ineffective watering canals, leading to the significant 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 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 just recently described camelina’s company 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 watering facilities 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 knowledge 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 establishing it as a viable concern in Central Asia.
If the current past is anything to go by it is not likely to be American and European investors, fixated as they are on Caspian oil and gas.
But while the Japanese flight experiments indicate Asian interest, American investors have the academic proficiency, if they are ready to follow the Silk Road into developing a new market. Certainly anything that lessens water usage and pesticides, diversifies crop production and improves 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 more affordable than pipelines, they can be constructed faster.
And jatropha curcas‘s biofuel potential? Another story for another time.