Mission Biofuels India Private Ltd

Central Asia’s Vast Biofuel Opportunity

The recent discoveries of a International Energy Administration whistleblower that the IEA may have distorted key oil forecasts under intense U.S. pressure is, if real (and whistleblowers seldom step forward to advance their professions), a slow-burning thermonuclear explosion on future global oil production. The Bush administration’s actions in pressing the IEA to underplay the rate of decrease from existing oil fields while overplaying the chances of discovering new reserves have the potential to throw federal governments’ long-term preparation into chaos.

Whatever the reality, rising long term worldwide demands seem certain to overtake production in the next decade, especially provided the high and rising costs of establishing brand-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 first barrels of oil are produced.

In such a circumstance, additives and alternatives such as biofuels will play an ever-increasing function by extending beleaguered production quotas. As market forces and rising rates drive this technology to the leading edge, among the richest prospective production areas has been totally ignored 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 investment can be obtained. Unlike Brazil, where biofuel is manufactured 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 former Soviet Caucasian and Central Asian republics, those clustered around the coasts of the Caspian, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan have actually seen their economies boom since of record-high energy costs, while Turkmenistan is waiting in the wings as a rising manufacturer of natural gas.

Farther to the east, in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, geographical seclusion and relatively little hydrocarbon resources relative to their Western Caspian neighbors have actually mostly hindered their ability to cash in on rising worldwide energy needs already. Mountainous Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan remain mostly reliant for their electrical needs on their Soviet-era hydroelectric infrastructure, but their increased need to create winter electricity has resulted in autumnal and winter water discharges, in turn badly impacting 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 largely directed towards cotton production, while Kazakhstan, starting 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, offered the thirsty needs of cotton monoculture, foreign propositions to diversify agrarian production towards biofuel would have terrific appeal in Astana, Ashgabat and Tashkent and to a lower degree Astana for those hardy financiers going to bet on the future, specifically as a plant native to the area has actually already proven itself in trials.

Known in the West as false flax, wild flax, linseed dodder, and Siberian oilseed, camelina is drawing in increased scientific interest for its oleaginous qualities, with several European and American companies already examining how to produce it in business quantities for biofuel. In January Japan Airlines undertook a historical test flight utilizing camelina-based bio-jet fuel, ending up being the very first Asian provider to try out flying on fuel obtained from sustainable feedstocks during a one-hour presentation flight from Tokyo’s Haneda Airport. The test was the culmination of a 12-month evaluation of camelina’s functional efficiency ability and potential business viability.

As an alternative energy source, camelina has much to advise 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 used as a rotation crop with wheat, which would make it of particular interest in Kazakhstan, now Central Asia’s major wheat exporter. Another bonus 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 pushing can draw out 250 kg. Nothing in camelina production is squandered as after processing, the plant’s particles can be used for animals silage. Camelina silage has an especially appealing concentration of omega-3 fatty acids that make it a particularly fine livestock feed prospect that is just now getting recognition in the U.S. and Canada. Camelina is quick growing, produces its own natural herbicide (allelopathy) and competes well against weeds when an even crop is established. According to Britain’s Bangor University’s Centre for Alternative Land Use, “Camelina could be an ideal 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 household, is indigenous to both Europe and Central Asia and hardly a new crop on the scene: archaeological proof suggests it has been cultivated in Europe for a minimum of 3 millennia to produce both grease and animal fodder.

Field trials of production in Montana, presently the center of U.S. camelina research, revealed a vast array of outcomes of 330-1,700 pounds of seed per acre, with oil material differing between 29 and 40%. Optimal seeding rates have actually been determined to be in the 6-8 lb per acre variety, as the seeds’ small size of 400,000 seeds per pound can create issues in germination to achieve an optimal plant density of around 9 plants per sq. ft.

Camelina’s potential could allow 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 given that achieving 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 fabric industry. The process was sped up under the Soviets. While Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan were likewise 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 actually 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 absence of options Tashkent remains wedded to cotton, producing about 3.6 million heaps each year, which generates more than $1 billion while constituting around 60 percent of the nation’s tough currency earnings.

Beginning in the mid-1960s the Soviet federal government’s instructions 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 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, leading to the significant shrinking of the rivers’ final destination, the Aral Sea. The Aral, once 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 ecological disasters.

And now, the dollars and cents. Dr. Bill Schillinger at Washington State University just recently explained camelina’s organization 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 watering infrastructure and a modest wage scale in contrast to America or Europe – all that’s missing out on is the foreign financial investment. U.S. financiers have the cash and access to the competence of America’s land grant universities. What is certain is that biofuel’s market share will grow in time; less particular is who will gain the benefits of developing it as a viable 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 suggest Asian interest, American financiers have the scholastic knowledge, if they are willing to follow the Silk Road into establishing a new market. Certainly anything that minimizes water usage and pesticides, diversifies crop production and enhances the lot of their agrarian population will receive most careful 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 potential? Another story for another time.