Mission Agroenergy Ltd

Central Asia’s Vast Biofuel Opportunity

The recent revelations of a International Energy Administration whistleblower that the IEA may have distorted crucial oil forecasts under extreme U.S. pressure is, if real (and whistleblowers hardly ever come forward to advance their professions), a slow-burning atomic 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 opportunities of finding new reserves have the prospective to toss federal governments’ long-term preparation into turmoil.

Whatever the reality, rising long term global demands appear specific to outstrip production in the next decade, particularly given the high and rising costs 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 circumstance, ingredients and substitutes such as biofuels will play an ever-increasing function by stretching beleaguered production quotas. As market forces and increasing prices drive this innovation to the forefront, among the richest possible production areas has been completely ignored by investors already – 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 enough foreign financial investment can be acquired. Unlike Brazil, where biofuel is produced mainly 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 previous Soviet Caucasian and Central Asian republics, those clustered around the shores of the Caspian, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan have seen their economies boom due to the fact that of record-high energy prices, 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 reasonably little resources relative to their Western Caspian next-door neighbors have largely hindered their ability to cash in on rising worldwide energy needs already. Mountainous Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan remain mostly dependent for their electrical needs on their Soviet-era hydroelectric facilities, however their increased requirement to produce winter season electrical energy has actually led to autumnal and winter water discharges, in turn severely impacting the farming of their western downstream next-door neighbors Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.

What these 3 downstream nations do have however is a Soviet-era tradition of farming 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 ended up being a significant producer of wheat. Based on my conversations with Central Asian federal government authorities, given 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 degree Astana for those hardy financiers ready to bank on the future, particularly as a plant native to the area has actually currently proven itself in trials.

Known in the West as false flax, wild flax, linseed dodder, German sesame and Siberian oilseed, camelina is bring in increased clinical interest for its oleaginous qualities, with several European and American companies currently investigating how to produce it in business quantities for biofuel. In January Japan Airlines undertook a historical test flight using camelina-based bio-jet fuel, becoming 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 culmination of a 12-month evaluation of camelina’s functional efficiency ability and possible commercial viability.

As an alternative energy source, camelina has much to advise it. It has a high oil material low in hydrogenated fat. In contrast to Central Asia’s thirsty “king cotton,” camelina is drought-resistant and unsusceptible 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 significant wheat exporter. Another bonus of camelina is its tolerance of poorer, less fertile conditions. An acre sown 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 ton (1000 kg) of camelina will include 350 kg of oil, of which pressing can draw out 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 fats that make it a particularly great livestock feed prospect that is recently acquiring 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 developed. According to Britain’s Bangor University’s Centre for Alternative Land Use, “Camelina could be an ideal 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 native to both Europe and Central Asia and hardly a brand-new crop on the scene: archaeological proof shows it has actually been cultivated in Europe for at least 3 millennia to produce both vegetable oil and animal fodder.

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

Camelina’s capacity might enable Uzbekistan to start breaking out of its most dolorous tradition, the imposition of a cotton monoculture that has distorted the nation’s efforts at agrarian reform because attaining independence in 1991. Beginning in the late 19th century, the Russian federal government identified that Central Asia would become its cotton plantation to feed Moscow’s growing textile market. The procedure was accelerated under the Soviets. While Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan were likewise bought by Moscow to plant cotton, Uzbekistan in specific was singled out to produce “white gold.”

By the end of the 1930s the Soviet Union had become self-dependent in cotton; 5 decades later it had actually 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 may to diversify, in the lack of options Tashkent remains wedded to cotton, producing about 3.6 million tons every year, which brings in 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 largely 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 area’s two main rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, into inefficient watering canals, leading to the significant shrinking of the rivers’ last 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 initial size in one of the 20th century’s worst ecological disasters.

And now, the dollars and cents. Dr. Bill Schillinger at Washington State University recently described camelina’s business 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 amass $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 out on is the foreign financial investment. U.S. investors have the money and access to the proficiency of America’s land grant universities. What is specific is that biofuel‘s market share will grow gradually; less certain is who will profit of establishing it as a practical concern in Central Asia.

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

But while the Japanese flight experiments suggest Asian interest, American financiers have the academic know-how, if they are prepared to follow the Silk Road into establishing a new market. Certainly anything that lessens water usage and pesticides, diversifies crop production and enhances the great deal of their agrarian population will get most mindful factor to consider from Central Asia’s federal governments, and farming and vegetable oil processing plants are not only much less expensive than pipelines, they can be built faster.

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