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To: elmatador who wrote (70171)	1/4/2011 4:57:26 AM
From: Maurice Winn	1 Recommendation Respond to of 218863

ElM, the alternative fuels programmes were not boondoggles. The NZ government's Liquid Fuels Trust Board was boondoggling taxpayer funds, but BP's investments were large, paid by shareholders, and were with a view to being positioned for higher prices in crude oil which didn't happen. When crude oil prices started dropping and were obviously going to go down and stay down, I was advocating BP shut down R&D on alternative fuels. Doing so saved $millions. Those who were slow to shut down alternative fuels lost umpty$millions. The NZ government was swindled out of considerable money by being persuaded to finance Mobil's syngas plant [methane to methanol and then to synthetic petrol]. They paid for some other doubtful research too such as the tallow ester diesel fuel trials. BP bought Sohio and acquired a zeolite chemist among many others. He swapped from R&D to crude oil trading. He got a big pay increase, didn't have to fill in time sheets and got a big expense account. It seemed absurd that he didn't keep doing what would be extremely valuable which would be to find zeolite processes to move methane to gasoline in a single oxygen-free process. But he didn't. That's economics for you. Mqurice