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 real (and whistleblowers rarely step forward to advance their professions), a slow-burning thermonuclear surge on future worldwide oil production. The Bush administration's actions in pressing 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-term preparation into chaos.

Whatever the truth, rising long term worldwide needs seem specific to overtake production in the next years, particularly given the high and increasing costs of establishing new super-fields such as Kazakhstan's overseas Kashagan and Brazil's southern Atlantic Jupiter and Carioca fields, which will need billions in financial investments before their very first barrels of oil are produced.

In such a circumstance, additives and alternatives such as biofuels will play an ever-increasing function by stretching beleaguered production quotas. As market forces and increasing prices drive this technology to the leading edge, among the wealthiest prospective production locations has actually been completely overlooked by investors already - Central Asia. Formerly the USSR's cotton "plantation," the region is poised to end up being a major player in the production of biofuels if sufficient foreign financial investment can be procured. Unlike Brazil, where biofuel is made largely from sugarcane, or the United States, where it is mainly 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 a rising 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 largely inhibited their ability to capitalize rising worldwide energy demands up to now. Mountainous Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan remain largely reliant for their electrical needs on their Soviet-era hydroelectric facilities, but their heightened need to produce winter electrical power has actually caused autumnal and winter season water discharges, in turn seriously affecting the farming of their western downstream next-door neighbors Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.

What these three downstream nations do have however is a Soviet-era tradition of farming production, which in Uzbekistan's and Turkmenistan case was mostly directed towards cotton production, while Kazakhstan, beginning in the 1950s with Khrushchev's "Virgin Lands" programs, has actually ended up being a major manufacturer of wheat. Based upon my conversations with Central Asian government officials, given the thirsty demands of cotton monoculture, foreign proposals to diversify agrarian production towards biofuel would have great appeal in Astana, Ashgabat and Tashkent and to a lesser level Astana for those sturdy financiers willing to bank on the future, specifically as a plant native 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 a number of European and American business already investigating how to produce it in business quantities for biofuel. In January Japan Airlines undertook a historic test flight using camelina-based bio-jet fuel, becoming the first Asian carrier to experiment with flying on fuel obtained from sustainable feedstocks throughout a one-hour presentation 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 viability.

As an alternative energy source, camelina has much to advise it. It has a high oil content low in saturated fat. In contrast to Central Asia's thirsty "king cotton," camelina is drought-resistant and unsusceptible to spring freezing, needs 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 lot (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 debris can be used for animals silage. Camelina silage has an especially appealing concentration of omega-3 fatty acids that make it a particularly great animals feed candidate that is recently gaining recognition in the U.S. and Canada. Camelina is fast growing, produces its own natural herbicide (allelopathy) and completes well versus weeds when an even crop is established. According to Britain's Bangor University's Centre for Alternative Land Use, "Camelina might 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 family, is native to both Europe and Central Asia and hardly a brand-new crop on the scene: archaeological evidence indicates it has actually been cultivated in Europe for a minimum of three millennia 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 results of 330-1,700 pounds of seed per acre, with oil content differing in between 29 and 40%. Optimal seeding rates have been figured out to be in the 6-8 pound per acre variety, as the seeds' little size of 400,000 seeds per pound can develop issues in germination to accomplish an optimal plant density of around 9 plants per sq. ft.

Camelina's capacity could permit Uzbekistan to start breaking out of its most dolorous tradition, the imposition of a cotton monoculture that has warped the nation's efforts at agrarian reform because attaining independence in 1991. Beginning in the late 19th century, the Russian government figured out that Central Asia would become its cotton plantation to feed Moscow's growing textile market. The process was accelerated under the Soviets. While Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan were also ordered 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 ended up being self-sufficient 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, 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 remains wedded to cotton, producing about 3.6 million tons yearly, which brings in more than $1 billion while constituting around 60 percent of the nation's hard cash earnings.

Beginning in the mid-1960s the Soviet government's directives for Central Asian cotton production mostly 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 two main rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, into ineffective watering canals, resulting in the significant shrinkage of the rivers' final location, the Aral Sea. The Aral, when 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 environmental catastrophes.

And now, the dollars and cents. Dr. Bill Schillinger at Washington State University just recently described camelina's service design 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 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 financial investment. U.S. investors have the money and access to the knowledge of America's land grant universities. What is certain is that biofuel's market share will grow gradually; less certain is who will profit of developing it as a feasible issue in Central Asia.

If the recent past is anything to go by 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 financiers have the scholastic expertise, if they want to follow the Silk Road into developing a brand-new market. Certainly anything that reduces water use and pesticides, diversifies crop production and improves 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 much more affordable than pipelines, they can be constructed more quickly.

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