60 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, September 5, 2024”

  1. Dennis

    I see we have some experts on refining and engine technology commenting.

    In reply to your very valid question of hydrocarcking residues instead of fluid catalytic cracking as ever it is never always that simple. Both FCC and hydrocracking can crack vacuum gas oils ( 365- 550 deg C) and produce fuel products.
    The FCC will typically produce a sinficant gasoline stream and a smaller HAGO ( heavy atmpsheric gas oil) stream of poor quality. FCC’s operate at low pressure ( 1-2 bar) and temperatures of 550-600 deg C. FCC’s can come in several guises. Newer build units can produce significant light olefines for petrochemicals and other can produce more HAGO.

    Hydrocracking takes place under high pressure, 70-140 bar and temperatures of 350-370 deg C and produce a mix of unconverted oi, diesel, jet, and naphtha. The naphtha is good for catalytic reforming but not so good for direct gasoline blending. Hydrocrackers can come in numerous forms. The current preference appears to be single stage cracking which produces the above mix.

    Both FCC’s and hydrocrackers can be operated as a pair, whereby the the hydrocracker is used as a pre-treatment for an FCC which improves the FCC gasoline yield and sulphur.

    It is possible to operate both FCC’s and hydrocrackers on atmospheric residue, but this such operation can only be done on certain crude qualities. Hydracrackers and FCC’s are limited in a number of ways. Both are sensitive towards metals, particualry Ni and V which are catalyst poisons. Both are sensitive to refractory carbon such as asphaltenes which lay down on the catalyst. Both FCC’s and hydrocrackers use acidic zeolite cataysts. The FCC catalyst is a fine powder which is fluidised. FCC catalysts are constantly withdrawn to control metals and coke; there is a continuous addtion of fesh catalyst.The hydrocracker utilises fixed catalyst beds. Coke laid down on the FCC catalyst which is burned off in the regnerator. Hydrocracker catalysts coke during operation and have to be periodically replaced, generally 1-2 years.

    Hydrocrackers are limited by the cost of hydrogen. The worse the feed the more hydrogen is consumed and the quicker the catlayst is coked. FCC’s have similar limits in that the more coke on the catalyst results in more heat generation in the regenerator and higher catalyst consumption.

    For really poor vacuum residues the best option is coking, whereby the vacuum residue is literally cooked into a coke that is similar to coal and can be gasfied or used in cement production.

    So in answer to the original question there is no simple answer. The choice of techology to crack residues depends on a number of factors; crude quality, desired product mix, CAPEX and OPEX and so forth.

    FCC’s are lower cost for CAPEX and OPEX, whereas hydrocrackers require a signicnant hydrogen source and specialist metallurgy for the high pressure reactors, meaning they are more CAPEX intensive.

    As ever there is no simple solution to refinery optimisation and any reconfiguration will be dependent on many factors.

    With respect to engine technologies itis possible to run a diesel engine on different fuels. For instance some jet kerosines and even naphthas with the right fuel injection equipmemt. The critical parameter for diesel combustion is the auto-ignition temperature. High octane gasolines will not work in diesel engines due to their high auto-ignition tempertures.

    1. Carnot

      You certainly know your trade. I can confirm this, since I talk to some people that also know their trade in this industry. So I actually can relate to 90%+ of the abbreviations and the words you are using. And I would guess it is difficult to make investment decisions based on a 20+ years horizon.

      So, the overall picture is that oil should be getting more costly, because the right qualities are getting more obscure. There is a lot of sense in that, and we actually need the residue from heavier oils. Actually, sulphur is a useful product from the oil industry. And so it goes.

      Technologies have definitely made a difference – lets say in the last 10 years. But that is more when it comes to crude oil extraction. It has not rippled through worldwide, and it is not a certainty that it will.

      Another observation is that every reasonable oil discovery out there within the right api range without too many deficiencies are going to be fast tracked at some point. Difficult to say how that is going to play out.

      1. kolbeinih

        Thanksfor the positive cooment. I have been doing this for 46 years so I had better know my stuff.

        If you look at my link to Exxon crude assays( or just type crude assays) and you will see some of the West African crudes that Exxon is “exploiting”. I would rate these crude types as pretty useful for the legacy refineries with API’s in the 30-35 range

    1. Just started eating 3 hard-boiled eggs a day. Super cheap and healthy.

    1. Read the report.
      The units are tons(US) and metric tonnes.The figures relate to tonnes released to the environment (air,sea, land) and not land filled or recycled/ recovered. It represent about one eighth of production. It is not good , but then look at where most of the waste originates from. Much of it enters the oceans via the Earth’s major rivers which are used as a means of waste disposal (not only plastics).

      1. Plastic waste is a good reminder that climate change is not all there is to environmental damage. Here is some fun data:
        -Only 9% of all plastic produced is recycled
        -A whopping 2 million plastic bags are used every minute worldwide
        -Single-use plastics are illegal in some parts of the world
        -Every minute of every day a truckload of plastic is dumped into the ocean
        -73% of beach litter worldwide is plastic
        -One million plastic bottles are bought every minute
        -There could be more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050
        -Up to 95% of plastic polluting oceans is carried by 10 rivers
        -99% of seabirds will be eating plastic by 2050
        -The average person eats 70,000 microplastics each year
        -The average time that a plastic bag is used is just 12 minutes
        -Over the past 50 years, world plastic production has doubled and virtually all of that plastic comes from fossil “fuel”, mostly methane.
        https://givingcompass.org/article/10-facts-about-plastic-pollution-you-absolutely-need-to-know

        Pesticides, also fossil based, contaminate soil, water, turf, and other vegetation. In addition to killing insects or weeds, pesticides are toxic to a host of other organisms including birds, fish, beneficial insects, and non-target plants. Insecticides are generally the most acutely toxic class of pesticides, but herbicides can also pose risks to non-target organisms.
        Many pesticides are “known or probable” carcinogens and, as the President’s Panel notes, exposure to these chemicals is widespread.

        Children are especially at risk of developing cancer from pesticide exposure, and childhood cancer rates continue to rise. Studies show that pesticide exposure during pregnancy and throughout childhood increase the risk of cancer among children.
        https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2984095/#:~:text=Impact%20on%20environment,%2C%20and%20non%2Dtarget%20plants.

        While we do have pollution problems separate from fossil based chemistry such as deforestation and erosion, it’s pretty clear not only that fossil chemistry is fundamental to industrial civilization but that it is also self-terminating.

  4. “The Fraternal Order of Police endorses a convicted felon to be president of the United States.”

    We live in interesting times.

    Of course, their actions are consistent with their ideology, no matter how despicable.

  5. I have ordered a Cube e-bike for dealing with when the Mad Max times start. You never see bikes in the apocalypse, despite how much more useful they would be when running away from marauders or zombies or MAGAtards.

    1. E-bikes are annoying. They’re too powerful to fit in well on bike/walking paths and they’re too weak to keep up with normal traffic.

      It is possible to ride a normal bicycle at 30 mph but a cyclist who can ride at 30 mph is probably very skilled at maneuvering the bike. A n00b riding an ebike at 30 mph weaving in and out of traffic, riding on the side walk, is a recipe for disaster.

      1. The shitty riders are annoying, yes. Doubly so for e-scooters and the muppets using illegal overpowered ones recklessly, without PPE, in pavements. I’m all for electrifying and making micromobility more common, but only if people aren’t maniacs with it.

        In the UK, we have the old EU 15.5 mph limit imposed on motor assistance. But the motor is only for when I want to commute in nice weather without breaking a sweat. I otherwise will be getting a workout by having minimal or no assist for recreation.

        1. I don’t commute or spend much time on paved roads, but I ramble widely through the verdant hilly mixed landscape of forest trails, pastures, and parks out my back door often doing a 16 mile ride. Not bad for mid 60’s guy. Thankful to have the electric assist trail bike.
          They enable fantastic capability. Enjoy!

          1. I live in a rural area, mostly covered with vineyards, so it is a favorite location for bike riding. The downside is that the roads are mostly narrow and because of the high rainfall in winter time there are generally ditches alongside the roads. Add to this the relative speed differential between the cars and the bicycles ‘sharing the road” is pretty awful a lot of the time, especially on summer weekends when bikers come from miles around to crowd the local roads. Two or three times a year we have officially sanctioned bicycle races which are a further nuisance for those of us just trying to live our normal lives.

            Once a week or so I go for a four mile walk with a friend on a paved hiking trail. Usually we walk at sunup so the path is far from crowded. The only downside is that about once per day an electric bike comes up behind us, silently and fast, scaring the heck out of us.
            These days, on these roads and paths, it seems to me that because of the speed differential and the “sometimes” lack of courtesy by some that mixing bikes with travelers going either much faster or much slower is an uncomfortable situation. Ideally roads and trails would be wide enough, courtesy would prevail and everyone would be happy. Today it seems to me that the situation is uncomfortable and often, for me, scary. I neither want to run over a bicycle nor get knocked to the ground by one.
            When I was younger (like 50 years ago) I biked to work whenever the weather permitted which was pretty often in San Diego county! The roads there were wider than here without the ditches. Conceptually I like the idea of more bikes and fewer cars but today, physically and culturally it does not seem to work well in my area.

            1. Really used to enjoy biking along Green Valley Rd out toward Occidental and Guerneville…back when the county was smaller and on quiet weekdays.

            2. Hickory:
              I live on Vine Hill Rd., narrow, high speed cars, plus bikes.
              I was walking on the shoulder near my house a while back. There was a muddy embankment to my left so I was on the edge of the pavement. A jerk in a BMW (a common sight) blew his horn and gestured for me to get out of his way, clearly angry that I was costing him to lose 2 0r three seconds on his important trip. The last time I walked on the road I had to jump in ditch because a driver decided to pass another car right where I was walking.
              I’ve had to deal with a string of bikes plus two cars at the same time on the road. At age 80 I don’t walk on public roads any more.

            3. Beamer drivers should be the first against the wall when the revolution comes. Or at the very least, be given mandatory road etiquette lessons detailing what those stalks on the left of the steering wheel are for.

            4. JJH, I avoid biking on roads with cars as best I can. Takes away the joy of it, for me.
              I love that area but I lamented the whole county is pretty poor in regard to public spaces, including good bike paths. I haven’t been on the J Rodota trail since it had been installed.

            5. Hickory:
              I agree about public spaces here, especially the roads. I moved here from San Diego county in 1979. I was appalled then and my opinion hasn’t changed. Fortunately everything else, from the weather to the people is worlds better.
              It’s the Joe Redota trail that I walk on in the early morning. It is really nice then. Except for the bikes.

          2. Thanks! Yeah, not had a bike since one basic Raleigh back when I was a teen that I used for my early-20s summer job which was five miles away from my parents’. Now in my 40s and been contemplating getting a way to get to work (eight miles away) when the spring and summer get going and given I dinged my car recently and need to book it in for repair for a few days.

            I guess with the oil prices crashing, this is a funny time to think about reducing car use and going for muscle and electrical.

            I also just got a bell, because I don’t want to be that arsehole who silently appears behind people out walking and scares the bejesus out of them. I had a guy in an e-scooter almost clip me and my partner on the footpath in town a few months back, and another kid on one veer into the centre of the road as I was pulling out my driveway a week ago. Both with no helmets or a shit to give, it seems.

            2. Joe Redota trail

              Santa Rosa
              12
              Lived there for quite some time.

              It has really changed

      2. The annoying thing is that there is no adequate infrastructure for e-bikes.

    2. KLEIBER —
      I dunno about ebike for Mad Max scenarios, but it’s interesting to see what countries have solar as the largest electricity source. Eritrea, South Sudan, Yemen, Somalia. All of them have been going through a pretty rough patch recently.

      1. It’s unlikely that their problems stem from solar electric facilities.

        1. JJHMAN —
          Yeah, I’d say solar is part of the solution rather than the problem.

          Another example is Ukraine. The Russians are bombing the electricity infrastructure, so there is a massive move to set up solar power there. Solar is so distributed that it isn’t worth the missiles you would need to knock it out.

      2. Those nations have problems that I think they’d rather swap for having a few charging issues with. Just about all of them have drought or civil war happening or in recent memory.

        It’s when I see Saudi not having anywhere near as much solar and wonder who’s huffing glue over there.

  7. Hey Dennis,

    I’m responding to a couple of recent comments you’ve made and putting this one here as it is a non-petroleum topic.

    Specifically, you’ve made at least a couple of positive sounding comments recently about the potential for “fake meat” to have positive environmental impacts. I’m curious if you have some references that you might offer in support of this?

    If you haven’t heard of him, Chris Smaje is small farmer in SW England. He has done a bit of work rebutting Monbiot’s praise for such a path. In particular, Smaje has looked at the energy necessary for creating these proteins and finds this investment to be 4+ times as large as some of the proponents. You can find some of his most recent comments at the link below.

    https://chrissmaje.com/2024/08/newsflash-no-2-manufactured-food-update/

    I don’t know enough to have a good understanding for who is correct. However, my sense is that while we can and have applied science to great effect in ag (think Green Revolution), we’re not far enough along to entirely replace the food web what has evolved over uncounted years.

    Thanks in advance for any good source material you might pass along.

    1. My daughter teaches animal science at the local JC. She asserts that most grazing land is unfit for growing food crops so that, sans irrigation and fertilizer, growing animals for food is often more economic and more ecological than grain and such. She may, however, be biased. She does agree that fattening cattle with grain is not economic.

      1. Jjhman, it all depends on the part of the country you are growing and grazing. Yes, very dry and arid land is totally unfit for growing crops. But in the eastern part of the USA, all land is fit for grazing is also fit for growing crops. And that is the case in all areas of the USA that has adequate rainfall for crops. Cattle can graze on arid scrublands but not a lot of cattle per acre. The best grazing land is also great for growing crops. There is simply no difference in good grazing land and good cropland.

        1. To me the “adequate” grazing land is probably a good measure of how much beef should be in our diet. (Don’t tell my daughter I said that)

        2. A substantial portion of the land in the eastern and southern USA is much better suited to pasture than to raising crops.

          Small irregularly shaped fields don’t lend themselves to the use of modern crop production equipment. Just moving such equipment from one field to another can be a real deal killer if you own such land, or want to rent it to a farmer with modern equipment.

          Land that is rough, with exposed rock, or steep places, etc, isn’t well suited to the plow, or the combine. Erosion can be a real problem if you’re trying to raise crops. You have damned little erosion when your land is in grass.

          And if there’s a lot of houses around, the neighbors tend to like cows better than crops. I’m NOT talking about feedlots, lol, but rather just seeing some cows eating grass or resting in the shade as opposed to seeing a man in what looks like a space suit spraying clouds of insecticides that can drift onto cars and out door furniture, etc.

          And while you may have to sell your cows if you have drought or flood, being unable to feed them, you generally don’t lose very much money, compared to losing a field crop such as soybeans or corn. The grass comes right back with only a little help, maybe none at all, once the flood recedes or it starts raining again.

          And the necessary investment in equipment and buildings is generally a rather minor fraction of what’s necessary to make a go of raising crops.

          I know a lot of people who raise some beef on a hundred acres or less. They can make a modest living this way, if they own their land, but they wouldn’t have a prayer of making a go of raising crops on their land due to lack of scale or lack of a local market.

    2. T Hill, thanks for the link. Yes, those energy numbers seem high but something to remember is that milk is only 8% protein. Smaje linked to this fascinating (techno-optimist) article:

      Making ‘Food Out Of Thin Air’
      On the outskirts of Helsinki, a pioneering factory is harvesting natural, scalable proteins all from fermented bacteria. Could this be the future of food?

      https://www.noemamag.com/making-food-out-of-thin-air/

    3. Consider the following data in your considerations-
      https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-per-protein-poore
      https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/land-use-protein-poore
      https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/land-use-kcal-poore
      https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/scarcity-water-protein-poore

      One generalization that rings true- avoiding or minimizing beef and lamb consumption is a big win by most measures, in most places. The exception being low density grazing in regions that aren’t suitable for crops…too dry, rocky or otherwise poor soils.
      There should be good sheep grazing under many photovoltaic installations.

      1. Thanks for the reply Dennis.

        I’ve seen this one before. Statements like the one below make me skeptical about this information source.

        “Superabundant energy creates a thriving economy, where the cost of energy is barely a factor and superabundant supply is a given.”

        I’m not qualified to judge the underlying science. However, conversations with a friend who is a biological engineer make me wary of just how complicated it is to get exactly what you want out of a bioreactor.

  8. https://journals.lww.com/health-physics/abstract/2022/02000/world_atmospheric_co2,_its_14c_specific_activity,.2.aspx

    https://journals.lww.com/health-physics/fulltext/2022/11000/components_of_co2_in_1750_through_2018_corrected.7.aspx

    Fossil fuel has no 14C because the half-life of 14C is only couple of thousand years.
    If the global atmospheric rise of CO2 is a result of fossil fuel burning, then the 14C in the air should be diluted.

    research from Caltech claims forest burning in Canada last year emitted more CO2 than India’s fossil fuel emissions

      1. This quote shows very poor understanding of the life-cycle of a diffusively mobile reagent that does not sequester easily

        Sheng Wu: “Fossil fuel has no 14C because the half-life of 14C is only couple of thousand years. If the global atmospheric rise of CO2 is a result of fossil fuel burning, then the 14C in the air should be diluted.”

        Certain plausible-sounding scientific tropes get passed around and serve more as an indication of an agenda than of a reasoned scientific argument. It should be more embarrassing for you that you hide behind fake plausibility than just come out and reveal your agenda.

    2. Shen- almost all of the carbon in the atmosphere, living things, soil and water is carbon 12, almost 99% as you would expect….it was all formed long ago.
      About 1.1% is carbon 13, and only about 1 in a trillion atoms of carbon is C14.
      The atomic bomb testings in the 20th century created a relative spike in c14.

      These considerations do not alter the carbon dioxide greenhouse gas scenario related to the massive fossil fuel combustion pulse that is going on.
      The onset of a massive volcanic event/era would alter the scenario- something like this
      “The Deccan Traps date back to around 66 million years ago, when magma from deep inside Earth erupted to the surface. In some parts of the Deccan Traps, the volcanic layers are more than two kilometers (1.2 miles) thick, making this the second-largest volcanic eruption ever on land.” extends over about 200,000 sq miles.

  9. US Yield curve back to normal

    2 yr: 3.6770%
    10 yr: 3.7249%

    Is this good news. Does it imply a soft landing?

    Thanks

    1. No it has been inverted for 2 years. What follows is hard landing. Both the short and the long end falling. Just the short end falls faster than the long end. Which un-inverts the curve.

      It’s called bull steepening because it’s only bullish for bond prices.

      Wholesale gas price is $1.92 that is with the OPEC cuts still in place. It is a demand issue.

      1. HHH

        In the numbers above, the 2 yr is lower than the 10 yr. I think it just un-inverted today. That is why I asked the question. Maybe you mis-read the numbers.

        1. I read the numbers right. I think you misunderstood what I said. So I’ll say it again.

          Recession follows the steepening out of the yield curve. Both short term and long term rates go lower. It’s just that the short term rates are falling faster than the long term rates. Which is the un-inverting of the yield curve.

          The yield curve is telling you the exact opposite of what you think it’s telling you. It implies hard landing. Not we are going to be ok.

          We are not going to avoid a nasty recession here.

          And it’s global. Germany’s yoy new vehicle sales were atrocious. It was equivalent to having two entire plants offline.
          And sales of EV’s were down 2/3rds.

          You’re located in Canada right? The BoC has done 3 straight rate cuts. And a lot more are coming.

          Oil prices are heading down because the economy sucks. Here recently I’ve read plenty of comments elsewhere where people believe oil prices are being manipulated lower.

          No. The economy sucks that is why prices are heading down.

          Wholesale gasoline prices here in the US aren’t really affected by economic troubles going on outside the US. That is a demand problem within the US.

          1. HHH

            I guess I’m really confused. As I recall when the curve inverted, I kept reading articles that this implied a recession and market reversal were in our future.

            1. Judging by say the last 100 years when the yield curve inverts. The recession doesn’t hit until after it un-inverts. And the yield curve is just starting to un-invert.

              Only other time the yield curve was inverted for this long and this deep was right before the Great Depression. Nothing else to compare it to.

              The inversion prior to 2008 is nothing like it is now.

  10. “Republicans Worry Trump Will Be ‘Like a Lab Rat Hitting the Cocaine’ at Debate”

    Lets not put down Lab Rats by comparing them to Trump—

    1. I’m wondering how he will deal with the mike muting:
      1. Shouting and waving his arms.
      2. Pouting
      3. Walking over to Harris’ podium and physically intimidating her as he did Hillary Clinton.
      If he tries #3 hope she hits him with a taser.

  11. METHANE EMISSIONS ARE RISING FASTER THAN EVER

    The world has not hit the brakes on methane emissions, a powerful driver of climate change. More than 150 nations have pledged to slash by 30% this decade under a global methane pledge, but new research shows global methane emissions over the past five years have risen faster than ever. Atmospheric concentrations of methane are now more than 2.6 times higher than in pre-industrial times—the highest they’ve been in at least 800,000 years. Methane emission rates continue to rise along the most extreme trajectory used in emission scenarios by the world’s leading climate scientists.

    After a summer when severe weather and heat waves have given a glimpse of the extremes predicted in our changing climate, the authors write, “The world has reached the threshold of 1.5C increases in global average surface temperature, and is only beginning to experience the full consequences.”

    https://phys.org/news/2024-09-methane-emissions-faster.html

  12. To me the “adequate” grazing land is probably a good measure of how much beef should be in our diet. (Don’t tell my daughter I said that)

    1. Most beef is ground beef anyway, and it’s easy to fake, especially in popular recipes like pasta sauce, chili, tacos etc.
      Meanwhile processed food giants are waking up to the increased profit opportunities of actively selling beans as “healthy environmentally friendly meat”.

  14. Our resident renewable energy skeptics don’t have much to say about any progress being made in the green sector.
    But here and there I see something mentioned that can at least potentially make a serious difference, for instance batteries that are built using new designs incorporating far cheaper materials such as sodium rather than lithium.

    And it looks as if thermal storage using fire brick can be made to work in the cement and metals industries….. if plenty of otherwise surplus off peak wind and solar juice is available to provide the heat.

    At first glance this sounds sort of idiotic of course. But, and this is a BIG but, renewables advocates generally agree that we’re going to have to over build wind and solar farms by a factor of two or three in order to have enough juice at times when the skies are cloudy and the wind just isn’t blowing very much.

    Meaning……. that when the sun is bright and the breeze is fresh, there’s going to be a gazillion kilowatt hours available for such purposes. This may never be enough to allow us to give up using natural gas and coal for such purposes, but it can at least mean cutting way back on the amounts needed……. thereby conserving gas for other uses, such as making nitrate fertilizers , etc, while at the same time reducing CO2 emissions.

  15. For the MMT crowd.

    The events of the 1590s had suddenly brought home to more thoughtful Castilians the harsh truth about their native land – its poverty in the midst of riches, its power that had shown itself impotent… For this was not only a time of crisis, but a time also of the awareness of crisis – of a bitter realization that things had gone wrong. It was under the influence of the arbitristas that early seventeenth-century Castile surrendered itself to an orgy of national introspection, desperately attempting to discover at what point reality had been exchanged for illusion….

    The arbitristas proposed that Government expenditure should be slashed…

    Most of the arbitristas recommended the reduction of schools and convents and the clearing of the Court as the solution to the problem. Yet this was really to mistake the symptoms for the cause. MartínGonzález de Cellorigo was almost alone in appreciating that the fundamental problem lay not so much in heavy spending by Crown and upper classes – since this spending itself created a valuable demand for goods and services – as in the disproportion between expenditure and investment. ‘Money is not true wealth,’ he wrote, and his concern was to increase the national wealth by increasing the nation’s productive capacity rather than its stock of precious metals. This could only be achieved by investing more money in agricultural and industrial development. At present, surplus wealth was being unproductively invested – ‘dissipated on thin air – on papers, contracts, censos, and letters of exchange, on cash, and silver, and gold – instead of being expended on things that yield profits and attract riches from outside to augment the riches within. And thus there is no money, gold, or silver in Spain because there is so much; and it is not rich, because of all its riches….’

    The Castile of González de Cellorigo was…a society in which both money and labour were misapplied; an unbalanced, top-heavy society, in which, according to González, there were thirty parasites for every one man who did an honestday’s work; a society with a false sense of values, which mistook the shadow for substance, and substance for the shadow.

    J.H. Elliott, Imperial Spain: 1469-1716

    The Anglo-American empire is at this precise moment.

    1. JT

      I would rather say that true wealth is the energy that runs through the economic system, and that some of it can be stored for some time. If given the option of chosing between upgraded water supply, sewer handling and rebuilding that bridge; gold could be equally good. Except, it does not really give the same utility – unless somebody realise the value of it. And some very well off people will.

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