The current discoveries of a International Energy Administration whistleblower that the IEA might have distorted key oil projections under extreme U.S. pressure is, if true (and whistleblowers hardly ever step forward to advance their professions), a slow-burning thermonuclear 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 chances of finding new reserves have the prospective to throw federal governments' long-lasting preparation into mayhem.
Whatever the truth, rising long term worldwide demands seem specific to overtake production in the next decade, particularly offered the high and rising expenses of developing brand-new super-fields such as Kazakhstan's offshore Kashagan and Brazil's southern Atlantic Jupiter and Carioca fields, which will need billions in financial investments before their first barrels of oil are produced.
In such a situation, additives and replacements 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, one of the richest prospective production locations has actually been totally overlooked by investors already - Central Asia. Formerly the USSR's cotton "plantation," the region is poised to end up being a significant gamer in the production of biofuels if adequate foreign financial investment can be obtained. Unlike Brazil, where biofuel is manufactured mostly from sugarcane, or the United States, where it is primarily distilled from corn, Central Asia's ace resource is an indigenous 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 because of record-high energy prices, while Turkmenistan is waiting in the wings as an increasing producer of natural gas.
Farther to the east, in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, geographical isolation and relatively little hydrocarbon resources relative to their Western Caspian neighbors have actually mainly prevented their ability to cash in on rising global energy needs up to now. Mountainous Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan stay mainly dependent for their electrical requirements on their Soviet-era hydroelectric facilities, but their increased requirement to create winter season electrical energy has actually led to autumnal and winter season water discharges, in turn badly impacting the farming of their western downstream next-door neighbors Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.
What these 3 downstream countries do have nevertheless is a Soviet-era tradition 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 become a major manufacturer of wheat. Based on my discussions with Central Asian government authorities, given the thirsty needs of cotton monoculture, foreign proposals 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 happy to bank on the future, specifically as a plant native to the region has already shown itself in trials.
Known in the West as incorrect flax, wild flax, linseed dodder, German sesame and Siberian oilseed, camelina is bring in increased scientific interest for its oleaginous qualities, with a number of European and American business already investigating how to produce it in commercial quantities for biofuel. In January Japan Airlines carried out a historic test flight using camelina-based bio-jet fuel, becoming the very first Asian provider to experiment with flying on fuel originated from sustainable feedstocks during a one-hour demonstration flight from Tokyo's Haneda Airport. The test was the culmination of a 12-month assessment of camelina's operational performance capability and prospective commercial viability.
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 specific 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 heap (1000 kg) of camelina will consist of 350 kg of oil, of which pushing can extract 250 kg. Nothing in camelina production is squandered as after processing, the plant's debris can be utilized for animals silage. Camelina silage has an especially appealing concentration of omega-3 fats that make it a particularly great 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 contends well versus weeds when an even crop is developed. According to Britain's Bangor University's Centre for Alternative Land Use, "Camelina could be a perfect 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 household, is native to both Europe and Central Asia and barely a brand-new crop on the scene: archaeological evidence indicates it has actually been cultivated in Europe for at least three centuries to produce both veggie oil and animal fodder.
Field trials of production in Montana, presently the center of U.S. camelina research study, revealed a large range of results of 330-1,700 pounds of seed per acre, with oil content varying between 29 and 40%. Optimal seeding rates have been determined to be in the 6-8 pound per acre variety, as the seeds' small size of 400,000 seeds per pound can produce issues in germination to attain an optimum plant density of around 9 plants per sq. ft.
Camelina's potential could allow Uzbekistan to start breaking out of its most dolorous legacy, the imposition of a cotton monoculture that has deformed the country's attempts at agrarian reform since attaining 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 market. The process was accelerated under the Soviets. While Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan were also ordered 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 actually ended up being self-dependent in cotton; five years later it had actually become 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 might to diversify, in the lack of alternatives Tashkent remains wedded to cotton, producing about 3.6 million loads each year, which generates more than $1 billion while making up roughly 60 percent of the nation's hard cash income.
Beginning in the mid-1960s the Soviet federal government's regulations for Central Asian cotton production mainly bankrupted the area'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 region's 2 primary rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, into ineffective irrigation canals, resulting in the dramatic 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 shrunk to one-quarter its original size in one of the 20th century's worst ecological disasters.
And now, the dollars and cents. Dr. Bill Schillinger at Washington State University just 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 amass $230."
Central Asia has the land, the farms, the irrigation 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 know-how of America's land grant universities. What is particular is that biofuel's market share will grow in time; less certain is who will profit of establishing it as a feasible issue 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 indicate Asian interest, American investors have the academic proficiency, if they want to follow the Silk Road into establishing a new market. Certainly anything that decreases 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 governments, and farming and vegetable oil processing plants are not only much cheaper than pipelines, they can be built more rapidly.
And jatropha curcas's biofuel potential? Another story for another time.
