Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: elmatador who wrote (23214)	9/27/2007 4:34:49 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 217657

ElM, in my day, I was ditching ethanol R&D in BP Oil because it wasn't economic. 20 years later, it is borderline economic at $80 a barrel with government tax subsidies. Lots of people in BP Oil were Gung Ho for ethanol. I wasn't. I thought methanol was better - can make it from methane and put it in fuel cells, or burn it directly, or blend it in petrol. But methanol became uneconomic too by 1986. There are vast oil and gas resources which can be produced cheaply. Ethanol can't be. "Big Oil" can't sabotage ethanol [or anything else]. I was keen for BP Oil to get into methanol, even though it would destroy a lot of BP business [refining margins etc] because if BP didn't, DuPont would [and so would hordes of others]. It's a competitive world in the liquid fuels and nobody can stop anything other than governments making particular things they want to stop illegal [or tax them heavily]. Big Oil is okay with better car-making. I succeeded in getting 98 RON introduced instead of the Eurograde idea of one fuel at 95 RON. I thought that people buying high performance BMWs want high performance fuels and will pay high margins to get them [= more profit]. People wanting cheap little transport could use the low octane components with low performance and lower cost. To get people to pay high-end petrol prices, there needs to be high-end cars to use it. BP Oil couldn't stop car-makers making anything they like. What car-makers can do is make cars which report to the driver on the quality and cost-effectiveness of the fuel. Put the price per litre in when refuelling and the car could report on how many kilometres per dollar the car gets and how many kilowatt-seconds per dollar. An oil company producing poor quality fuel at high prices would not be long for this world. Mqurice