Mission NewEnergy Limited

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  • Founded Date December 12, 1924
  • Sectors Accounting / Finance
  • Posted Jobs 0
  • Viewed 11
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Company Description

Central Asia’s Vast Biofuel Opportunity

The current revelations of a International Energy Administration whistleblower that the IEA may have misshaped crucial oil projections under intense U.S. pressure is, if true (and whistleblowers seldom step forward to advance their professions), a slow-burning thermonuclear surge on future global 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 brand-new reserves have the possible to toss federal governments’ long-term planning into chaos.

Whatever the reality, rising long term global needs appear particular to overtake production in the next decade, particularly provided the high and rising expenses of developing new super-fields such as Kazakhstan’s overseas Kashagan and Brazil’s southern Atlantic Jupiter and Carioca fields, which will require billions in financial investments before their first barrels of oil are produced.

In such a circumstance, ingredients and replacements such as biofuels will play an ever-increasing role by stretching beleaguered production quotas. As market forces and rising rates drive this technology to the leading edge, one of the richest potential production locations has been completely overlooked by financiers 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 sufficient foreign investment can be acquired. Unlike Brazil, where biofuel is manufactured largely 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 since of record-high energy costs, while Turkmenistan is waiting in the wings as an increasing producer of natural gas.

Farther to the east, in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, geographical seclusion and fairly little hydrocarbon resources relative to their Western Caspian neighbors have largely inhibited their ability to capitalize increasing worldwide energy needs up to now. Mountainous Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan stay mainly reliant for their electrical requirements on their Soviet-era hydroelectric facilities, however their increased need to produce winter season electrical power has caused autumnal and winter season water discharges, in turn seriously impacting the farming of their western downstream neighbors Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.

What these 3 downstream nations do have however 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 ended up being a significant producer of wheat. Based on my conversations with Central Asian government authorities, offered 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 lesser extent Astana for those sturdy financiers ready to bank on the future, particularly as a plant indigenous to the region 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 drawing in increased clinical interest for its oleaginous qualities, with numerous European and American companies already investigating how to produce it in commercial amounts for biofuel. In January Japan Airlines undertook a historical test flight using camelina-based bio-jet fuel, ending up being the very first Asian provider to experiment with flying on fuel originated from sustainable feedstocks during a one-hour presentation flight from Tokyo’s Haneda Airport. The test was the culmination of a 12-month examination of camelina’s functional performance ability and prospective industrial practicality.

As an alternative energy source, camelina has much to advise it. It has a high oil content 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 used as a rotation crop with wheat, which would make it of specific interest in Kazakhstan, now Central Asia’s major wheat exporter. Another bonus 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 ton (1000 kg) of camelina will include 350 kg of oil, of which pushing can draw out 250 kg. Nothing in camelina production is lost 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 a particularly 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 competes well versus weeds when an even crop is established. According to Britain’s Bangor University’s Centre for Alternative Land Use, “Camelina could be an ideal 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 suggests it has been cultivated in Europe for a minimum of 3 millennia to produce both veggie 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 lbs of seed per acre, with oil content varying between 29 and 40%. Optimal seeding rates have actually been figured out to be in the 6-8 lb per acre range, as the seeds’ small size of 400,000 seeds per lb can create problems in germination to attain an optimum plant density of around 9 plants per sq. ft.

Camelina’s potential could allow Uzbekistan to begin breaking out of its most dolorous tradition, the imposition of a cotton monoculture that has distorted the nation’s efforts at agrarian reform given that achieving self-reliance in 1991. Beginning in the late 19th century, the Russian government determined that Central Asia would become its cotton plantation to feed Moscow’s growing fabric industry. The process was sped up under the Soviets. While Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan were likewise bought 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-dependent in cotton; five years later it had actually ended up being 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 absence of options Tashkent stays wedded to cotton, producing about 3.6 million tons annually, which brings in more than $1 billion while constituting roughly 60 percent of the country’s hard currency income.

Beginning in the mid-1960s the Soviet government’s instructions for Central Asian cotton production largely bankrupted the area’s scarcest resource, water. Cotton uses 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 2 primary rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, into ineffective watering canals, leading to the significant shrinking of the rivers’ last location, the Aral Sea. The Aral, once the world’s fourth-largest inland sea with an area of 26,000 square miles, has diminished 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 service 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 gather $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 out on is the foreign financial investment. U.S. financiers have the cash and access to the knowledge of America’s land grant universities. What is specific is that biofuel‘s market share will grow in time; less specific is who will profit of it as a feasible concern in Central Asia.

If the current past is anything to pass it is unlikely to be American and European investors, fixated as they are on Caspian oil and gas.

But while the Japanese flight experiments suggest Asian interest, American investors have the academic knowledge, if they are prepared to follow the Silk Road into establishing a brand-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 careful factor to consider from Central Asia’s governments, and farming and grease processing plants are not only much more affordable than pipelines, they can be constructed quicker.

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

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