
Mission Biofuels India Private Ltd
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Founded Date December 17, 1948
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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 intense U.S. pressure is, if real (and whistleblowers seldom come forward to advance their professions), a slow-burning thermonuclear explosion on future global oil production. The Bush administration’s actions in pushing the IEA to underplay the rate of decrease from existing oil fields while overplaying the opportunities of finding new reserves have the prospective to toss governments’ long-lasting planning into mayhem.
Whatever the truth, increasing long term global demands seem particular to overtake production in the next years, especially offered the high and increasing costs of establishing brand-new super-fields such as Kazakhstan’s overseas 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 costs drive this technology to the forefront, one of the richest prospective production locations has actually been totally overlooked by investors up to now – Central Asia. Formerly the USSR’s cotton “plantation,” the area 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 produced 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 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 a rising manufacturer of gas.
Farther to the east, in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, geographical isolation and fairly scant hydrocarbon resources relative to their Western Caspian neighbors have actually mainly inhibited their capability to money in on rising global energy needs up to now. Mountainous Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan remain mainly dependent for their electrical needs on their Soviet-era hydroelectric facilities, but their heightened requirement to generate winter electricity has caused autumnal and winter season water discharges, in turn significantly 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 legacy of farming production, which in Uzbekistan’s and Turkmenistan case was mostly directed towards cotton production, while Kazakhstan, in the 1950s with Khrushchev’s “Virgin Lands” programs, has actually ended up being a significant manufacturer of wheat. Based upon my discussions with Central Asian federal government officials, provided 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 level Astana for those sturdy investors happy to bank on the future, specifically as a plant native to the area has currently shown itself in trials.
Known in the West as false flax, wild flax, linseed dodder, German sesame and Siberian oilseed, camelina is bring in increased scientific interest for its oleaginous qualities, with several European and American business already investigating how to produce it in commercial amounts for biofuel. In January Japan Airlines carried out a historic test flight using camelina-based bio-jet fuel, ending up being the first Asian carrier to try out flying on fuel originated from sustainable feedstocks throughout a one-hour demonstration flight from Tokyo’s Haneda Airport. The test was the culmination of a 12-month examination of camelina’s operational performance ability and potential industrial viability.
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 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 contain 350 kg of oil, of which pushing can draw out 250 kg. Nothing in camelina production is wasted as after processing, the plant’s debris can be used for animals silage. Camelina silage has an especially attractive concentration of omega-3 fats that make it an especially fine animals feed candidate that is recently gaining acknowledgment 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 might 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 barely a new crop on the scene: archaeological proof indicates 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 study, revealed a large range of results of 330-1,700 pounds 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 lb per acre variety, as the seeds’ little size of 400,000 seeds per pound can produce problems in germination to accomplish an optimal plant density of around 9 plants per sq. ft.
Camelina’s capacity might permit Uzbekistan to start breaking out of its most dolorous legacy, the imposition of a cotton monoculture that has deformed the nation’s efforts at agrarian reform because accomplishing self-reliance in 1991. Beginning in the late 19th century, the Russian federal government determined 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 purchased by Moscow to sow cotton, Uzbekistan in particular 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 on it had 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 absence of alternatives Tashkent stays wedded to cotton, producing about 3.6 million tons annually, which brings in more than $1 billion while constituting approximately 60 percent of the country’s difficult currency income.
Beginning in the mid-1960s the Soviet federal government’s regulations for Central Asian cotton production mainly 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 2 main rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, into inefficient irrigation canals, leading to the significant shrinking of the rivers’ final location, 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 original size in one of the 20th century’s worst eco-friendly disasters.
And now, the dollars and cents. Dr. Bill Schillinger at Washington State University recently explained 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 gather $230.”
Central Asia has the land, the farms, the irrigation infrastructure and a modest wage scale in comparison to America or Europe – all that’s missing is the foreign investment. U.S. financiers have the money and access to the expertise of America’s land grant universities. What is particular is that biofuel’s market share will grow in time; less particular is who will gain the benefits of developing it as a feasible concern in Central Asia.
If the recent past is anything to pass it is unlikely to be American and European financiers, focused as they are on Caspian oil and gas.
But while the Japanese flight experiments suggest Asian interest, American investors have the academic proficiency, if they are willing to follow the Silk Road into establishing a brand-new market. Certainly anything that minimizes water use and pesticides, diversifies crop production and improves the lot of their agrarian population will get most careful consideration from Central Asia’s governments, and farming and grease processing plants are not just more affordable than pipelines, they can be constructed more quickly.
And jatropha curcas‘s biofuel capacity? Another story for another time.