GitLab

The recent revelations of a International Energy Administration whistleblower that the IEA may have misshaped crucial oil projections under extreme U.S. pressure is, if true (and whistleblowers seldom come forward to advance their professions), a slow-burning atomic explosion on future international oil production. The Bush administration's actions in pressing the IEA to underplay the rate of decrease from existing oil fields while overplaying the opportunities of discovering new reserves have the prospective to toss governments' long-lasting preparation into chaos.

Whatever the reality, increasing long term worldwide demands appear particular to outstrip production in the next years, particularly offered the high and increasing expenses of developing brand-new super-fields such as Kazakhstan's offshore 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 prices drive this innovation to the forefront, among the wealthiest potential production locations has actually been absolutely ignored by investors up to now - Central Asia. Formerly the USSR's cotton "plantation," the area is poised to end up being a major player in the production of biofuels if enough foreign investment can be procured. Unlike Brazil, where biofuel is produced mainly from sugarcane, or the United States, where it is primarily 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 actually seen their economies boom because of record-high energy costs, while Turkmenistan is waiting in the wings as a rising producer of natural 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 mainly prevented their ability to capitalize increasing worldwide energy needs up to now. Mountainous Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan remain mostly dependent for their electrical needs on their Soviet-era hydroelectric infrastructure, however their heightened need to create winter electricity has resulted in autumnal and winter water discharges, in turn badly affecting the agriculture of their western downstream 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, starting 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 officials, offered the thirsty demands of cotton monoculture, foreign proposals to diversify agrarian production towards biofuel would have fantastic appeal in Astana, Ashgabat and Tashkent and to a lower degree Astana for those hardy investors happy to bet on the future, especially as a plant indigenous to the area has actually currently shown itself in trials.

Known in the West as false flax, wild flax, linseed dodder, German sesame and Siberian oilseed, camelina is attracting increased clinical interest for its oleaginous qualities, with several European and American companies currently examining how to produce it in commercial amounts for biofuel. In January Japan Airlines carried out a historical test flight utilizing camelina-based bio-jet fuel, becoming the first Asian carrier to explore flying on fuel derived from sustainable feedstocks throughout a one-hour presentation flight from Tokyo's Haneda Airport. The test was the culmination of a 12-month evaluation of camelina's operational performance capability and potential business practicality.

As an alternative energy source, camelina has much to recommend 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, needs 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 reward of camelina is its tolerance of poorer, less fertile conditions. An acre sown with camelina can produce approximately 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 used for animals silage. Camelina silage has an especially attractive concentration of omega-3 fatty acids that make it an especially great animals feed prospect that is simply now acquiring acknowledgment in the U.S. and Canada. Camelina is fast 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 a perfect 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 family, is native to both Europe and Central Asia and hardly a brand-new crop on the scene: historical evidence shows it has actually been cultivated in Europe for a minimum of 3 millennia to produce both vegetable oil and animal fodder.

Field trials of production in Montana, currently 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 produce problems in germination to achieve an ideal plant density of around 9 plants per sq. ft.

Camelina's capacity might allow Uzbekistan to begin breaking out of its most dolorous tradition, the imposition of a cotton monoculture that has warped the country's efforts at agrarian reform given that 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 textile market. The procedure was sped up under the Soviets. While Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan were also ordered 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 become self-sufficient in cotton; 5 years later it had become 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 might to diversify, in the lack of options Tashkent stays wedded to cotton, producing about 3.6 million heaps yearly, which brings in more than $1 billion while constituting roughly 60 percent of the nation's hard cash income.

Beginning in the mid-1960s the Soviet 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 region's two main rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, into inefficient watering canals, resulting in the significant shrinking of the rivers' last location, the Aral Sea. The Aral, when the world's fourth-largest inland sea with an area of 26,000 square miles, has diminished to one-quarter its initial size in among the 20th century's worst environmental disasters.

And now, the dollars and cents. Dr. Bill Schillinger at Washington State University just recently described camelina's business model to 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 garner $230."

Central Asia has the land, the farms, the watering infrastructure and a modest wage scale in comparison to America or Europe - all that's missing is the foreign financial investment. U.S. financiers have the money and access to the expertise of America's land grant universities. What is specific 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 go by it is unlikely 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 scholastic competence, if they want to follow the Silk Road into developing a new market. Certainly anything that reduces water use and pesticides, diversifies crop production and enhances the great deal of their agrarian population will receive most careful factor to consider from Central Asia's federal governments, and farming and veggie oil processing plants are not only much less expensive than pipelines, they can be constructed more quickly.

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