GitLab

The recent revelations of a International Energy Administration whistleblower that the IEA might have misshaped essential oil projections under intense U.S. pressure is, if true (and whistleblowers rarely step forward to advance their professions), a slow-burning thermonuclear explosion on future international oil production. The Bush administration's actions in pressuring the IEA to underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the opportunities of discovering brand-new reserves have the prospective to throw federal governments' long-term planning into turmoil.

Whatever the reality, increasing long term global needs appear specific to overtake production in the next years, especially provided the high and increasing costs of developing new super-fields such as Kazakhstan's offshore Kashagan and Brazil's southern Atlantic Jupiter and Carioca fields, which will need billions in investments before their first barrels of oil are produced.

In such a situation, additives and substitutes 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, one of the richest possible production areas has actually been completely neglected by financiers already - Central Asia. Formerly the USSR's cotton "plantation," the area is poised to become a significant gamer 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 mainly distilled from corn, Central Asia's ace resource is an indigenous plant, Camelina sativa.

Of the former Soviet and Central Asian republics, those clustered around the shores of the Caspian, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan have actually seen their economies boom since of record-high energy prices, 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 fairly little hydrocarbon resources relative to their Western Caspian neighbors have mainly hindered their capability to money in on rising worldwide energy demands up to now. Mountainous Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan stay largely dependent for their electrical needs on their Soviet-era hydroelectric facilities, however their heightened need to generate winter season electrical energy has caused autumnal and winter water discharges, in turn significantly affecting the farming of their western downstream neighbors Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.

What these three downstream countries do have nevertheless is a Soviet-era legacy of farming 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 become a major manufacturer of wheat. Based upon my conversations with Central Asian federal government officials, given the thirsty demands of cotton monoculture, foreign propositions to diversify agrarian production towards biofuel would have fantastic appeal in Astana, Ashgabat and Tashkent and to a lesser degree Astana for those durable financiers going to wager on the future, especially as a plant indigenous to the region has already proven itself in trials.

Known in the West as incorrect flax, wild flax, linseed dodder, German sesame and Siberian oilseed, camelina is attracting increased scientific interest for its oleaginous qualities, with several European and American companies already examining how to produce it in industrial quantities for biofuel. In January Japan Airlines undertook a historic test flight using camelina-based bio-jet fuel, becoming the very first Asian provider to explore flying on fuel obtained from sustainable feedstocks during a one-hour demonstration flight from Tokyo's Haneda Airport. The test was the conclusion of a 12-month examination of camelina's operational efficiency capability and potential commercial viability.

As an alternative energy source, camelina has much to suggest it. It has a high oil material low in saturated 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 reward 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 load (1000 kg) of camelina will include 350 kg of oil, of which pushing can extract 250 kg. Nothing in camelina production is wasted as after processing, the plant's particles can be used for animals silage. Camelina silage has an especially attractive concentration of omega-3 fatty acids that make it an especially fine livestock feed prospect that is just now acquiring recognition 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 established. According to Britain's Bangor University's Centre for Alternative Land Use, "Camelina might be a perfect 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 evidence suggests it has been cultivated in Europe for a minimum of 3 centuries to produce both vegetable oil and animal fodder.

Field trials of production in Montana, currently the center of U.S. camelina research study, showed a wide variety of outcomes of 330-1,700 pounds of seed per acre, with oil material differing in between 29 and 40%. Optimal seeding rates have been identified to be in the 6-8 pound per acre range, as the seeds' little size of 400,000 seeds per pound can create issues in germination to accomplish an optimal plant density of around 9 plants per sq. ft.

Camelina's potential might permit Uzbekistan to start breaking out of its most dolorous tradition, the imposition of a cotton monoculture that has deformed the country's attempts at agrarian reform given that accomplishing self-reliance 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 industry. The procedure was accelerated under the Soviets. While Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan were also purchased 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 ended up being self-sufficient in cotton; five decades later on it had actually 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 alternatives Tashkent stays wedded to cotton, producing about 3.6 million heaps each year, which generates more than $1 billion while constituting approximately 60 percent of the nation's hard currency earnings.

Beginning in the mid-1960s the Soviet federal government's directives for Central Asian cotton production largely 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 2 primary rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, into inefficient watering canals, resulting in the remarkable 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 actually shrunk to one-quarter its original size in among the 20th century's worst environmental catastrophes.

And now, the dollars and cents. Dr. Bill Schillinger at Washington State University recently described camelina's service model 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 garner $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 is the foreign investment. U.S. investors have the cash and access to the know-how of America's land grant universities. What is specific is that biofuel's market share will grow gradually; less particular is who will enjoy the advantages of developing it as a viable issue in Central Asia.

If the recent 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 indicate Asian interest, American investors have the academic expertise, if they want to follow the Silk Road into establishing a new market. Certainly anything that decreases water use 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 only more affordable than pipelines, they can be developed faster.

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