Thermodynamics And Money

In his day M. King Hubbert was a great geologist who spent his life studying the planet's deposits of oil and gas. But as he got older, he simply lost it. His "peak oil" theory--which many people are citing these days--is a case study in junk economics.

Hubbert was born in 1903. By 1949 he had concluded that the fossil-fuel era was going to end, and quite soon. Global production would peak around 2000, he predicted, and would decline inexorably thereafter. By 1980 the aging Hubbert was certain that the impending crisis "was unique to both human and geologic history.... You can only use oil once. You can only use metals once. Soon all the oil is going to be burned and all the metals mined and scattered." Indeed we would soon be forced to abandon our entire "monetary culture," replacing it with an accounting tied to "matter-energy" constraints. An editor of Geophysics magazine summarized Hubbert's views in 1983: "The science of matter-energy and the historic system of finance are incompatible."

Today this same nonsense is often dressed up with numbers in an analysis that's dubbed "energy return on energy invested" (Eroei). According to this theory it can never make sense to burn two units of energy in order to extract one unit of energy. The Eroei crowd concedes, for example, that the world has centuries' worth of junk oil in shale and tar sands--but they can also prove it's irrelevant. It takes more energy to cook this kind of oil out of the dirt, they argue, than you end up with in the recovered oil. And a negative Eroei can only mean energy bankruptcy. The more such energy investments we make, the faster things will grind to a halt.

Eroei calculations now litter the energy policy debate. Time and again they're wheeled out to explain why one form of energy just can't win--tar sands, shale, corn, wood, wind, you name it. Even quite serious journals--Science, for example--have published pieces along these lines. Energy-based books of account have just got to show a profit. In the real world, however, investors don't care a fig whether they earn positive Eroei. What they care about is dollar return on dollar invested. And the two aren't the same--nowhere close--because different forms of energy command wildly different prices. Invest ten units of 10-cent energy to capture one unit of $10 energy and you lose energy but gain dollars, and Wall Street will fund you from here to Alberta.

As it happens, the people extracting oil out of tar sands today use gas from the fields themselves to power their refineries. There's gas, too, under what has been called Alberta's "trillion- barrel tar pit," but it's cheap because there's no pipeline to deliver it to where it would be worth more. As an alternative to gas, Total S.A., the French oil giant, is thinking about building a nuclear power plant to supply heat to melt and crack the tar. But nuclear reactors extract only a minuscule fraction of the energy locked up in the nuclei of uranium atoms; all the rest gets discarded as "waste." On Eroei logic, uranium would never be used to generate either electricity or heat. But per unit of raw stored energy, uranium is a thousand times cheaper than oil.

Greens touting the virtues of biomass as a source of energy rarely note that almost all of it is used by lumber mills burning branches and sawdust on site. No one cares how much energy the sun "invested" to grow all that waste wood. And every electric power plant, whatever it's fueled with, runs a huge Eroei deficit, transforming five units of cheap, raw heat into two units of electrical energy. But it all works out because the market values the energy in electricity at about 30 times the energy in coal.

The economic value of energy just doesn't depend very strongly on raw energy content as conventionally measured in British thermal units. Instead it's determined mainly by the distance between the BTUs and where you need them, and how densely the BTUs are packed into pounds of stuff you've got to move, and by the quality of the technology at hand to move, concentrate, refine and burn those BTUs, and by how your neighbors feel about carbon, uranium and windmills. In this entropic universe we occupy, the production of one unit of high-grade energy always requires more than one unit of low-grade energy at the outset. There are no exceptions. Put another way, Eroei--a sophomoric form of thermodynamic accounting--is always negative and always irrelevant. "Matter-energy" constraints count for nothing. The "monetary culture" still rules.

Peter Huber is executive vice president of ICx Technologies, a fellow of the Manhattan Institute and coauthor of The Bottomless Well (Basic Books, January 2005). Visit his home page at www.forbes.com/huber. (related articles from Peter Huber)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051015/ap_on_bi_ge/spain_chavez_oil

By CIARAN GILES, Associated Press Writer

SALAMANCA, Spain - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Saturday that the world faces an energy crisis but there is little chance of his country and other     OPEC members increasing production because they are already pumping near "their capacity."

"The world will have to get used to a barrel price, I think, of above $50, and energy will have to be saved," he told reporters as leaders from Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries met in this central Spanish town.
After soaring in August, crude oil prices have been between $60 and $70 a barrel for more than a month.
"We're at the doorway of major energy crisis worldwide," Chavez said. "We'll have to develop other resources such as wind, solar and nuclear energy -- naturally for peaceful purposes." He said Venezuela was in talks with Argentina and Brazil regarding nuclear power.

"Prices will continue to rise but oil is running out," he said.

This applies for the time after the second oil crisis, from 1988. The oil prices movement has generally followed the movements (up or down) of world coal production quite closely but with greater swings. It seems also that that the real energy swing producers in the world are the coal producers, not OPEC. The cahanges in world energy supply after 1985 have come mainly from coal.

How could we explain the connection with coal production and oil prices? Coal is a substitute for oil and rising oil prices induce an increase in coal production. Coal mining is different from oil or natural gas extraction by nature and can react easier to demand. Another explanation could be other way round: increasing coal production is connected to economic growth and the economic growth increases the demand of oil and causes oil prices rising.

The energy statistics show that the latter explanation is probably true. Oil production (as energy equivalent) changes doesn't tell about much substitution. Coal is mostly used for generating electricity and making steel and other energy-intensive products of heavy industry. This means investments and investments mean economic growth. Growth means more transports and driving and more oil demand. The share of oil in the world energy supply has been diminishing from the '80s and the changes in the oil supply have not been as decisive as before for the total global energy supply and hence for the economic development.

What does this mean? We could predict that the oil prices would rise even if the supply can still increase as long as the Asian (primarily Chinese) coal production can keep its present pace. If oil supply stagnates the oil prices will rise really high. But if the world coal production stagnates or decreases the oil prices could drop in any supply situation. This would mean an economic recession or depression. At present it seems that the coal production can increase for a while and so we could see rising oil prices.

It is not only the oil. It is also coal, gas and the others.  

What is so terribly difficult about the concept that in a finite world there are finite resourse? If the energy isn't there, no amount of wishing ore economic machinations is going to cause it to come into being. Does this guy know anything about geology other than that it vaguely has to do with rocks?

There is a certain mindset or philosophical orientation that is seems to be structurally incapable of realizing that there are limits on physical 'stuff'. Money can cause non-existant things to come into being.

Here's another little thought exercise:  Put Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Sam Walton, and some urban gang-banger in an empty room with one chocolate bar between them.  Time goes on and they are all getting hungry. Finally, Bill Gates pipes up and says, "If you all will agree, I will pay each of you one million dollars so that I can eat that chocolate bar." Then Warren Buffet chimes in and says, " I will pay each of you two million dollars for that chocolate bar."  Sam Walton soon raises the ante to three million.  Then the gang-banger pulls out a gun, picks up the chocolate bar and eats it, saying "Thanks for the offer, but I happen to be real hungry now."

That, I fear, is the way our global energy problems are going to be resolved: not by economics but by force.

Does anyone have any insight on this, is this credible?

"Demand for refined petroleum and natural gas products is projected to continue to grow. However, these refined products are going to get more expensive due to environmental regulations. Robert Bryce at World Energy Monthly is forecasting that $5 diesel fuel is coming soon. "The surging cost of diesel over the next 12 to 18 months will be caused by new regulations, capacity constraints throughout the midstream and downstream, and soaring demand."[5] According to Bryce beginning next June, American refiners will have to reduce the amount of sulfur in their diesel from 500 parts per million (ppm) to 15 ppm. In addition beginning in January of next year refiners must also reduce sulfur in gasoline from 90 ppm to 30 ppm.[6] This is the biggest change to motor-fuels since leaded gasoline was phased out three decades ago."

http://www.financialsense.com/stormwatch/2005/1014.html

A tax shall be levied on all means of transportation fuel deriving half or more of their energy from fossil fuels in a target price manner. On the first day of each month, the tax shall be adjusted so that the lowest retail fuel price shall meet the target rate. In 2010, that target rate shall be four (4) dollars, and shall increase twenty (20) cents every year thereafter. All revenues collected shall be divided equally and given to the citizenry on a yearly basis.

I want to do an emissions tax as well, as in a certain amount per ton produced. What emissions should be taxed, and how much? Any other ideas anyone has?

If pressed, Peter Huber will admit that conventional oil production will eventually peak and decline, and that therefore, by extension, every finite energy source will peak and decline--of course, on a cosmic time scale even the Sun falls into that category.  

However, Huber's contention is that aggregate energy use will ALWAYS increase, which is the theme of his book, "The Bottomless Well."  

What I find fascinating about Huber's position is the obvious contradiction, i.e., while he admits that individual energy sources will peak and decline, aggregate energy output--which is after all the sum of individual energy sources--will never decline;  it will increase forever.  

This is exactly analogous to admitting that while individual oil wells in a field will peak and decline, the total oil production from the field--which is of course the sum of the production from individual wells--will never peak and decline.

The real harm done by Huber, Yergin, et al is to the poor suckers that are going into debt trying support their suburban lifestyle--based on an assumption that high energy prices are a short term anomaly.  

As I would say in my youth, WTF?

The petrodollar stash is enormous. According to estimates by the International Monetary Fund, oil export revenues of Middle Eastern countries will reach nearly $400 billion this year.

On an inflation-adjusted basis, that is double the amount of those revenues in 1980, when oil prices surged after Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in Iran, and more than three times the figure of 1974, when the price of crude spiked after the Arab oil embargo.

This time around, it's not just Arab countries that are making a lot of money from oil, but also countries like Mexico, Russia and Canada. Ted Carmichael, chief Canadian economist at J. P. Morgan in Toronto, estimates that the 19 big energy exporters will reap $781 billion this year, compared with $549 billion in 2004 and $324 billion in 2002. What ultimately happens to this windfall - whether oil exporters decide to spend it or salt it away - will help determine how the pain caused by expensive energy is distributed throughout the American economy and the rest of the world.

At first glance, the implications are straightforward. If energy exporters spent the bulk of their newfound treasure on things like new oil exploration gear and fleets of limousines, for instance, much of the money would make a round trip, financing imports from the industrialized oil importing countries from which it came.

If, on the other hand, oil exporters saved their stash by, say, building up reserves invested in United States Treasury bonds, they would be effectively draining the money away from investment and consumption in the industrial world, delivering a potentially big blow to demand and employment.

But there's a twist to the story. Pumping tens of billions of dollars in savings by oil exporters into American government bonds and similar assets would help keep the lid on interest rates in the United States, adding support for the housing market and bolstering consumer spending by already over-stretched Americans. "Oil exporters could spend the money directly or help others increase spending, for example, by giving loans," said Hossein Samiei, head of the commodities unit in the I.M.F.'s research department.

So far, oil exporting countries have set much of the money aside. Russia's current account surplus - the broadest measure of its balance of trade - will swell to $102 billion from $60 billion last year, the monetary fund says. The surplus in Middle Eastern countries will rise to $218 billion this year from $57 billion in 2003, according to the I.M.F., almost double China's daunting surplus.

Economists reckon that this pile of savings has softened the impact of higher oil prices in the industrialized world, helping keep interest rates low. According to the I.M.F., more expensive energy will have only a modest impact on global growth, which should slow slightly to 4.3 percent this year from 5.1 percent in 2004.

Still, the situation is fluid. The monetary fund has said that Middle Eastern countries seem more cautious than in the 1970's, when they spent lavishly on public works and made many ultimately unproductive investments. But there are other profligate spenders among oil exporters, places like Venezuela and Nigeria.

"Oil exporters have a lot of useful ways to spend the money," said Kenneth Rogoff, a professor of public policy at Harvard University and a former chief economist at the I.M.F.

And the Middle East's apparent frugality may just reflect the difficulty of spending such a large windfall quickly.

Michael Dooley, an international economist who works as an adviser for Deutsche Bank, said: "In the past, what has happened is that when oil prices stabilize, oil producers find ways of spending money quickly. There is a lag of a couple of years between the increase in revenues and consumption."

Some of the money is already being consumed. For instance, while exports from OPEC members to the United States increased $20 billion in the first seven months of the year compared to 2004, American exports to the nations of OPEC, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, grew $6.5 billion in the same period.

As more of the oil money is spent, the American economy may be left in a precarious position. Maurice Obstfeld, a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, said, "If oil exporters lower their current account surplus, we will have to reduce our current account deficit."

This dynamic has a positive side. American exporters will get vibrant markets for their goods and services. But the nasty part is that a reduction in savings will mean higher interest rates.

IN the 1970's, Middle Eastern oil kingdoms squandered much of their new wealth. Much of what they saved was recycled via London and New York banks into sovereign loans to Latin American countries, which generally misspent the money, too. This set the stage for a string of financial crises in the 1980's when interest rates rose sharply as monetary policy was tightened to stave off inflation. "Last time the money was recycled, it was considered a good thing," Jeffrey Frankel, a professor of economics at Harvard, said. "It gave us a debt crisis a few years later."

This time around, the financial world looks mostly like a safer place. Developing countries in Latin America and beyond are managing their accounts much more prudently. But as the new petrodollars slosh through the global financial system, there remain some weak links, which are likely to suffer after the oil money reaches them. Debt-engorged American consumers and their expensive houses come to mind.

A few thoughts: First, recycling the petro$$$ back into USA economy would primarily enrich corporations, not ordinary "debt-engorged" & over-extended American consumers, if spent on high-ticket items like military arms, fleets of limos, drilling equipment...

Second, the article seems to assume that $50-60 (+) oil is temporary, like past price surges.  But if permanent (while supplies remain) due to Peak Oil, that throws a different wrench into equations. What would that mean?

At least NYT & I agree that American consumers are screwed... ;-)

His point that an electrical power plant has a 'negative' EROEI (he's wrong here too, as he should really be saying 'less than unity', but I will let that go for now) is totally pointless.  Due to real-world thermodynamic constraints, ALL energy conversion processes have a ratio of output/input less than unity. So what? Anybody who ever took high school science should know that.

No, the term EROEI should only be applied to the production of fuels and not to anything downstream from that point on.

Furthermore, the example of burning many BTUs of low-value coal to produce a a lesser number of BTUs in the form of gasoline is not energy 'production' at all.  Rather it is merely an energy conversion process to increase the 'form-value' of a fuel, i.e., coal have a low form-value and gasoline having a high form-value. It is merely buying a BTU in the form of gasoline with a greater number of BTUs in the form of coal. In the process no net energy has been 'produced'.

This is the main problem that business as usual people are missing. Peak oil works on differing scales - there is an individual and a global scale. Of course individuals can make investments that are energy losers but money makers - but globally in aggregate if the EROI is less than one, this practice will be fleeting - it will work for the individual but for society it will not. Same reason why Shell is investing billions in oil shale in Colorado - THEY might be able to make money at it, but they are using a finite amt of crude oil (and other things) to do it. (upshot is Shell has created a bit more energy and made a few dollars but the planets net stocks of energy quality have likely decreased)
Two other brief points. Energy Returned on Energy Invested is a RATIO => ER/EI - therefore it cannot be negative.

We continue to talk about an 'energy crisis' - given amts of coal, solar, hydro, etc (primarily coal) we do NOT have an energy crisis but a liqued fuels crisis-transportation and infrastructure built around it is whats at risk - not pure exajoules available. This is rehashed in Robert Hirsches new report in Atlantic Council of United States here

1. Since ER/EI is a ratio, in the worst case (not an energy source) it lies between 0 and 1 inclusive. Even if it's greater than 1, the closer the value is to 1, the more worthless it is as an attractive investment as a fuel source. The value would have to be at least 3 for anything to actually happen in my view.
2. Those asserting that Nuclear power is virtually free (as regards tar sand production in Alberta, Canada) should do some research about the energy costs of keeping a nuclear power plant humming. Total's tentative plans in this area only mean that the natural gas costs are killing them.
3. EROEI involves all the costs involved in the production process. This involves not just BTUs but also how much you paid the guy who drives the truck who delivers the coal to the coal-fired power plant where it is converted. It is the total cost, which includes the "direct" energy costs. These energy costs are merely the biggest obstacle and in a world where fossil fuel prices are rising, the most important. The guy who drives the truck is an energy sink too. We are living beings and we all require energy to stay alive. So does he.
4. If you doubt #3, think about tar sands as others above have done. Tar sands are not yet useable liquids. Nature has let us down in this case, the packaging is not complete. Therefore, there is extra cost in extracting and converting them to a useable liquid form. That's why the EROEI of tar sands is lower (but still greater than 1) than just sticking a well into the ground somewhere and sucking up the oil.

Is there anything more mainstream than that color coded news version of Highlights for Kids?  Anyway, it made me happy to see.  They even did a pretty good job of covering all of the bases.  The major stars from the peak oil movement sans Kunstler, and of course the arguments of Yergin the ever optimistic.  On the whole it comes off on the slightly negative side, especially when they talk about the potential limits of technology.

Nothing new to us, but hopefully a lot of Holiday Inn guests will be in for a rude awakening with their continental breakfast.

Posted 10/16/2005 11:10 PM     Updated 10/16/2005 11:41 PM

Debate brews: Has oil production peaked?

By David J. Lynch, USA TODAY

Almost since the dawn of the oil age, people have worried about the taps running dry. So far, the worrywarts have been wrong. Oil men from John D. Rockefeller to T. Boone Pickens always manage to find new gushers.

But now, a vocal minority of experts says world oil production is at or near its peak. Existing wells are tiring. New discoveries have disappointed for a decade. And standard assessments of what remains in the biggest reservoirs in the Middle East, they argue, are little more than guesses.

"There isn't a middle argument. It's a finite resource. The only debate should be over when we peak," says Matthew Simmons, a Houston investment banker and author of a new book that questions Saudi Arabia's oil reserves.

Today's gasoline prices are high because Hurricanes Katrina and Rita disrupted oil production in the Gulf of Mexico. But emergency supplies from strategic oil reserves in the United States and abroad can largely compensate for that temporary shortfall. If the "peak oil" advocates are correct, however, today's transient shortages and high prices will soon become a permanent way of life. Just as individual oil fields inevitably reach a point at which it gets harder and more expensive to extract the oil before output declines, global oil production is about to crest, they say. Since 2000, the cost of finding and developing new sources of oil has risen about 15% annually, according to the John S. Herold consulting firm.

As global demand rises, American consumers will find themselves in a bidding war with others around the world for scarce oil supplies. That will send prices of gasoline, heating oil and all petroleum-related products soaring.

"The least-bad scenario is a hard landing, global recession worse than the 1930s," says Kenneth Deffeyes, a Princeton University professor emeritus of geosciences. "The worst-case borrows from the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: war, famine, pestilence and death."

He's not kidding: Production of pesticides and fertilizers needed to sustain crop yields rely on large quantities of chemicals derived from petroleum. And Stanford University's Amos Nur says China and the United States could "slide into a military conflict" over oil.

Rising global demand for oil

There's no question that demand is rising. Last year, global oil consumption jumped 3.5%, or 2.8 million barrels a day. The U.S. Energy Information Administration projects demand rising from the current 84 million barrels a day to 103 million barrels by 2015. If China and India -- where cars and factories are proliferating madly -- start consuming oil at just one-half of current U.S. per-capita levels, global demand would jump 96%, according to Nur.

Such forecasts put the doom in doomsday. Many in the industry reject the notion that global oil production can't keep up. "This is the fifth time we've run out of oil since the 1880s," scoffs Daniel Yergin, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his 1991 oil industry history The Prize.

In June, Yergin's consulting firm, Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) in Cambridge, Mass., concluded oil supplies would exceed demand through 2010. Plenty of new oil is likely to be found in the Middle East and off the coasts of Brazil and Nigeria, Yergin says.

"There's a lot more oil out there still to find," says Peter Jackson, a veteran geologist who co-authored the CERA study.

Based on current technology, peak oil production won't occur before 2020, Yergin says. And even if it does, oil production volumes won't plummet immediately; they'll coast for years on an "undulating plateau," he says.

Debate growing sharper

Both sides in the peak oil controversy agree that oil is a finite resource and that every year, the world consumes more oil than it discovers. But those are about the only things they agree upon.

As the debate has persisted, it's grown personal. "Peak oil" believers disparage those who disagree as mere "economists" in thrall to the magic of the marketplace or simple-minded "optimists" who assume every new well will score.

Yergin emphasizes that the CERA study was developed by geologists and petroleum engineers, not social scientists. Of Simmons, Yergin says: "He's wonderful at stirring up an argument and slinging around rhetoric. ... For some of these people, it seems to be a theological issue. For us, it's an analytic issue."

When they're not trading insults, the two sides disagree fiercely over the likelihood of future technology breakthroughs, prospects for so-called unconventional fuel sources such as oil sands and even the state of Saudi Arabia's reserves.

The world's No. 1 oil exporter, in fact, is at the center of Simmons' new book, Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy, which has reinvigorated the peak oil argument.

Simmons says it's impossible for global production to keep up with surging demand unless the Saudis can increase daily production beyond today's 9.5 million barrels and continue pumping comfortably for decades. And, indeed, Yergin is counting on the Saudis to reach 13 million barrels a day by 2015.

Yet while the oil reserves of U.S. firms are verified by the U.S. Geological Survey, the Saudis -- like other OPEC countries -- don't allow independent audits of their reservoirs. So when Riyadh says it has 263 billion barrels locked up beneath the desert, the world has to take it at its word.

Simmons didn't. Instead, two years ago, he pulled about 200 technical papers from the files of the Society of Petroleum Engineers and performed his own assessment. His conclusion: The Saudis are increasingly straining to drag oil out of aging fields and could suffer a "production collapse" at any time.

Yergin is more optimistic both about the Saudis and the industry's prospects in general. If the past is any guide, technological breakthroughs will reshape both demand and supply, he says. In the 1970s, for example, the deepest offshore wells were drilled in 600 feet of water. Today, a Chevron well in the Gulf of Mexico draws oil from 10,011 feet below the surface.

Widespread use of technologies such as remote sensing and automation in "digital oil fields" could boost global oil reserves by 125 billion barrels, CERA says. Already, advanced software and "down hole measurement" devices to track what's happening in the well have elevated recovery rates in some North Sea fields to 60% from the industry average of 35%, Jackson says.

Technology also won't stand still on the consumption side of the equation, Yergin says. "By 2025 or 2030, we'll probably be moving around in vehicles quite different from the ones we drive today. Maybe we'll be driving around in vehicles that get 110 miles to the gallon," he says.

That's more than a guess. Toyota's 2001-model Prius hybrid got 48 miles per gallon; the 2005 model was up to 55 mpg. If automakers focused solely on energy efficiency, 110 mpg isn't out of the question.

Still, breakthroughs don't just happen, and in the late 1990s, after oil prices fell as low as $12 a barrel, major oil companies slashed research spending. Some who previously doubted the peak oil claims now wonder whether the industry is equipped to develop the necessary innovations.

"Before 1998, I was on the side that said, 'Technology solves all problems,' " says Roger Anderson of Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University. "The problem is, after $12 oil, oil companies responded by merging and firing large portions of their technical staff."

Now, the International Energy Agency in Paris estimates that $5 trillion in new spending is needed over the next 30 years to improve exploration and production.

The limits of technology

As oil prices -- now about $63 a barrel -- stay elevated, so-called unconventional supplies of oil become economically feasible. Exhibit one: enormous deposits of Canadian oil sands, which could eventually yield more than 170 billion barrels of oil. On the list of the world's biggest oil countries, that total puts the USA's northern neighbor behind only Saudi Arabia.

That's the good news. The bad news is that wringing oil from the sludge-like tar sands is difficult and costly, and requires enormous quantities of water and natural gas -- itself an ever-pricier fuel.

Deffeyes calls talk of substantial tar sands production "the fantasy of economists," adding: "They believe if you show up at the cashier's window with enough money, God will put more oil in the ground."

In recent months, the peak oil camp has received support from some fairly sober quarters, including the U.S. government. A 91-page study prepared in February for the Energy Department concluded: "The world is fast approaching the inevitable peaking of conventional world oil production ... (a problem) unlike any yet faced by modern industrial society."

So far, almost no one in government is calling for immediate action because of the peak oil argument. But in a recent interview with USA TODAY, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman sounded less than sanguine about the future.

"There's plenty of oil to deal with this over the near term, five years. But if you look out over the next 20, 25 years, we expect demand to grow 50% to 120 million barrels a day. I wouldn't want to opine that's available," says Bodman, a former professor of chemical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "It could be, but I don't know."