The current revelations of a International Energy Administration whistleblower that the IEA might have distorted essential oil forecasts under intense U.S. pressure is, if real (and whistleblowers rarely step forward to advance their professions), a slow-burning thermonuclear surge on future international oil production. The Bush administration's actions in pushing the IEA to underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the opportunities of discovering new reserves have the prospective to toss governments' long-lasting planning into chaos.
Whatever the truth, increasing long term international demands appear certain to overtake production in the next years, specifically provided the high and increasing costs 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 circumstance, additives and substitutes such as biofuels will play an ever-increasing role by extending beleaguered production quotas. As market forces and increasing costs drive this technology to the leading edge, among the wealthiest possible production areas has been totally overlooked by investors already - 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 adequate foreign financial investment can be procured. Unlike Brazil, where biofuel is made mostly 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 former Soviet Caucasian and Central Asian republics, those clustered around the coasts of the Caspian, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan have seen their economies boom because of record-high energy prices, while Turkmenistan is waiting in the wings as an increasing manufacturer of natural gas.
Farther to the east, in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, geographical isolation and relatively scant hydrocarbon resources relative to their Western Caspian next-door neighbors have actually mostly prevented their ability to money in on increasing international energy needs already. Mountainous Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan remain mainly dependent for their electrical needs on their Soviet-era hydroelectric infrastructure, but their heightened need to generate winter electrical energy has caused autumnal and winter water discharges, in turn badly affecting the farming of their western downstream neighbors Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.
What these 3 downstream nations do have nevertheless is a Soviet-era legacy of farming 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 actually ended up being a major manufacturer of wheat. Based upon my discussions with Central Asian government officials, given the thirsty needs 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 durable investors ready to wager on the future, specifically as a plant indigenous 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 commercial amounts for biofuel. In January Japan Airlines carried out 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 throughout a one-hour demonstration flight from Tokyo's Haneda Airport. The test was the culmination of a 12-month assessment of camelina's operational efficiency capability and possible commercial practicality.
As an alternative energy source, camelina has much to suggest 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 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 major wheat exporter. Another benefit of camelina is its tolerance of poorer, less fertile conditions. An acre planted 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 ton (1000 kg) of camelina will contain 350 kg of oil, of which pressing can extract 250 kg. Nothing in camelina production is squandered as after processing, the plant's particles can be used for livestock silage. Camelina silage has an especially attractive concentration of omega-3 fatty acids that make it an especially fine livestock feed candidate that is recently getting acknowledgment in the U.S. and Canada. Camelina is quick growing, produces its own natural herbicide (allelopathy) and completes well against 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 household, is indigenous to both Europe and Central Asia and barely a brand-new crop on the scene: archaeological proof shows it has been cultivated in Europe for at least three centuries to produce both grease and animal fodder.
Field trials of production in Montana, currently the center of U.S. camelina research, revealed a wide variety of outcomes of 330-1,700 lbs of seed per acre, with oil material differing in between 29 and 40%. Optimal seeding rates have actually been determined to be in the 6-8 pound per acre range, as the seeds' small size of 400,000 seeds per lb can produce problems in germination to accomplish an ideal plant density of around 9 plants per sq. ft.
Camelina's potential might allow Uzbekistan to start breaking out of its most dolorous legacy, the imposition of a cotton monoculture that has deformed the nation's attempts at agrarian reform because accomplishing self-reliance 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 process was accelerated under the Soviets. While Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan were also 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 actually ended up being self-dependent in cotton; 5 years later on it had actually become a major 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 options Tashkent stays wedded to cotton, producing about 3.6 million lots annually, which generates more than $1 billion while constituting around 60 percent of the country's hard cash income.
Beginning in the mid-1960s the Soviet federal government's regulations 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 organizers to divert ever-increasing volumes of water from the region's 2 main rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, into inefficient watering canals, resulting in the significant shrinkage of the rivers' final destination, the Aral Sea. The Aral, as soon as the world's fourth-largest inland sea with a location of 26,000 square miles, has shrunk to one-quarter its initial size in one of the 20th century's worst environmental 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 bring in $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 is the foreign 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 with time; less specific is who will reap the benefits of establishing it as a feasible issue in Central Asia.
If the current past is anything to pass it is not likely 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 financiers have the academic expertise, if they want to follow the Silk Road into developing a new market. Certainly anything that reduces water usage and pesticides, diversifies crop production and improves the lot of their agrarian population will get most cautious factor to consider from Central Asia's federal governments, and farming and grease processing plants are not just more affordable than pipelines, they can be constructed quicker.
And jatropha's biofuel potential? Another story for another time.
