Philippines Supreme Court Voids Major International Oil And Gas Deal

By Tsvetana Paraskova - Jan 10, 2023

A 2005 deal for oil and gas exploration in the South China Sea signed by the Philippines with companies from China and Vietnam is illegal, the Philippine Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday, saying the country’s constitution bars foreign firms from exploring Philippine natural resources.

The ruling, 14 years after an appeal was lodged, could make talks between China and the Philippines on energy exploration in non-disputed parts of the South China Sea more complicated, according to Reuters.

The long-running dispute in the South China Sea involves territorial claims by China as well as Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Brunei, and Malaysia. China has territorial claims to about 90 percent of the South China Sea, which has put it at odds with its neighbors.

A court in The Hague in 2016 ruled against China’s claims and in favor of the Philippines. China, however, has not acknowledged the ruling, which has heightened tensions in the area. Instead, it has continued with its agenda, according to which most of the sea is Chinese waters. 

China and the Philippines agreed at the end of 2019 to pursue joint oil and gas exploration in the South China Sea.

The South China Sea may hold 28 billion barrels of oil, according to an estimate from the U.S. Geological Survey from the mid-90s. Since then, with improvements in technology, this figure could have increased substantially.

However, in June 2022, the Philippines ditched talks with China on a potential joint exploration for oil and gas in the South China Sea due to sovereignty issues and constraints in the Philippines’ constitution.

Because of the Chinese claims over most of the South China Sea, the Philippines has struggled to find partners willing to engage in the exploration of resources in the basin.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

Stellantis seals batteries material deal with Element 25
Reuters | January 9, 2023 | 

Stellantis italian headquarters Turin (Stock Image)

Carmaker Stellantis has signed a deal with Australian miner Element 25 for the supply of manganese sulphite for batteries for its electric vehicles (EVs), the two companies said on Monday.


The agreement marks another step in efforts by Stellantis to secure long-term supplies of raw materials essential for electric vehicles as carmakers prepare for a surge in global demand for EVs in the transition towards cleaner motoring.

Stellantis, the world’s third-largest carmaker by sales, has previously signed deals with GME Resources for supply of nickel and cobalt sulphate and with Vulcan Energy Resources and United States-based Controlled Thermal Resources (CTR) for lithium hydroxide.

Related Article: Manganese batteries market may face deficit in 2024

Based on the five-year binding agreement announced on Monday, Element 25 will supply Stellantis with high-purity manganese sulphate monohydrate to be used in battery packs.

Shipments, for a total of 45 kilotons, are expected to begin in 2026, with options to extend term and volumes.

No financial details for the deal were provided.

Element 25 will source the material from its Butcherbird project in Western Australia and plans to construct a processing facility in the United States. Stellantis, meanwhile, will make an equity investment in Element 25, the two companies added in a statement.

“Our commitment to a carbon net-zero future includes creation of a smart supply chain to ensure we meet our customers’ desire for EVs,” Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares said.

Stellantis, formed through the merger of Fiat Chrysler and Peugeot maker PSA, wants 100% of its European passenger car sales and 50% of its US passenger car and light-duty truck sales to be battery electric vehicles by 2030.

(By Giulio Piovaccari; Editing by David Goodman)

Startup’s satellite technology could change weather forecasting for mining

Amanda Stutt | January 6, 2023 |

Image from Tomorrow.io.

Tomorrow.io, a Boston-based climate and weather intelligence company has been making news headlines with its technology and is partnering with miners to schedule blasting operations, monitor routes and highways and put protocols in place to protect workers from extreme weather, based on its forecasts.


For the past 40-50 years companies that once comprised the private weather industry would repackage data from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and its predecessor agencies to sell it. NOAA is a public data model which was not built for regional forecasts or mass alerts and does not cover remote locations well.

Its data, by the time it reaches people, is already three days old.

Tomorrow.io said its technology can refresh data every three hours and plans to launch 30 satellites equipped with meteorological radar that can monitor ocean activity many weather stations aren’t able to decipher until it hits the coast.

Last month, the six-year-old company was named a leader among climate risk analytics providers. It has raised $260 million and has a team of over 40 data scientists. Its three founders met in the Israeli air force.

Rei Goffer, co-founder and its chief strategy officer, recalls piloting an F-16 with a “super generic” one-page report listing winds and cloud patterns, without any specifics for his route or aircraft.

“It’s a little more technical than what you’d see on TV,” he told Bloomberg. “That’s the state of the art in weather.” The veterans formed their company to tailor forecasts for specific industries that depend on predictable weather, such as airlines and sports leagues. Tomorrow.io aggregates existing data—from weather stations and sensors slapped on buoys and balloons—and mixes in other signals it collects from cell towers and car windshield wipers, an approach the company calls the “weather of things.”

It has built its own proprietary network of weather forecasting technology, satellites equipped with radar, for a fraction of the cost of a regular satellite and about the size of a mini-fridge.

This year, it will deploy two more satellites adding to the one already in space. It is collaborating with NOAA and the satellites were funded in part by a $19 million grant from the US Air Force.

“It’s a changing of the tides – it’s the next generation of climate impact,” Dan Slagen, Tomorrow.io’s chief marketing officer told MINING.com. “Climate security is the new cyber security.“

Sample dashboard with insights on when to not blast, increase in dust. Image from Tomorrow.io.

“We’ll be the only company in the world with that, and additionally the only company that is able to really look in depth at remote parts of the world such as South America, Australia and Africa. Right now we basically don’t have access to real time weather forecasting over the oceans.”

“We’ve been able to basically translate weather data into weather insights,” Slagen said.

“We work with mining companies to identify specific job use cases that are impacted by weather and how to get around them so they are not impacted anymore,” Slagen said. “It’s a changing of tides – the next generation of climate impact.”

Monica Leal, director of mining sales said the technology signals a new generation of sustainable mining.

“Weather costs this industry millions – we need to have better systems in place,” she said.

“Companies are trying to reach sustainability goals by 2030 or 2050, but what can we do in the short term – what can we do now to decrease risk and to increase operational efficiency? This is where we come in.”

(With files from Bloomberg)

Finnish technology improves lithium’s production efficiency

Staff Writer | January 6, 2023 | 

The µDOES technology installed at Keliber’s site. (Image courtesy of Sensmet).

Finnish company Sensment announced the launching of a new technology that improves the production efficiency of lithium.


In a press release, the Oulu-based firm explained that, traditionally, battery metal manufacturers had to rely on batch sampling and laboratory analyses to control their processes but this is costly, labour intensive, and typically involves a delay of 4–10 hours.

In contrast, Sensmet’s technology, dubbed Micro-Discharge Optical Emission Spectroscopy (µDOES), is able to measure multiple metals, such as any battery metal and their impurities, in real time.

The solution is based on atomic emission spectroscopy. A micro-discharge or electric spark is created directly inside the aqueous sample, causing a microscopic volume of the fluid surrounding the spark to be flash-heated to 10,000 °C.

Molecular species in the micro-discharge are dissociated into atoms, which are excited to their respective higher electronic states. Upon returning to their ground state, these atoms release their excess energy by emitting light at their characteristic wavelengths. The µDOES, then, measures this atomic emission spectrum to derive a quantitative analysis of the metals contained in the sample.

According to Sensment, data from the system’s analyzer are displayed locally showing the concentrations and trends for each metal, and peak levels can be set for each element. Results are transferred digitally to users’ databases and/or the cloud.

“In hydrometallurgical processes that cannot be controlled by monitoring pH, direct measurements of dissolved metal concentrations are essential,” the brief states. “There are alternative methods of monitoring, but all of these have major limitations. For example, online XRF is unable to measure light elements such as lithium and sodium, and it is almost impossible to calibrate XRF for low concentration impurity measurements.”

In the view of the team at Sensmet, given the large sums of money involved in lithium production, the accurate dosing of precipitation chemicals is extremely important.

“For example, when sodium carbonate is added to a slurry containing beta spodumene under high temperature and pressure, lithium carbonate and analcime solids are formed. If insufficient sodium carbonate is dosed, some of the lithium will not react to form lithium carbonate, and unreacted lithium will be lost in the side product analcime sand,” the statement reads. “This is extremely undesirable because it represents a loss of revenue. Overdosing is also undesirable because it would result in a waste of process chemicals.”

In addition to lithium manufacturing, the technology is also suited for the ‘black mass’ recycling of battery metals. Strict online monitoring and control are implemented to reduce impurity levels and thereby prevent the cost and delay incurred by retreatment.

At Keliber’s site

Keliber, a subsidiary of Sibanye-Stillwater in Finland, ran a pilot-scale test program in 2022 to evaluate the µDOES analyzer in the continuous optimization of precipitation chemical dosing during lithium production.

Battery-grade lithium hydroxide monohydrate was produced from spodumene concentrate treated by high-temperature conversion in a rotary kiln. A hydrometallurgical technology was developed to produce battery-grade lithium hydroxide monohydrate by soda pressure leaching. The pilot ran continuously at the demonstration plant for 400 hours and achieved a total lithium recovery rate of more than 88%.

Keliber tested the analytical performance of the µDOES analyzer for the continuous optimization of precipitation chemical dosing. Nearly 80 samples were drawn from the process and the sodium and lithium concentrations were analyzed in parallel using both the µDOES continuous analyzer and a laboratory ICP-OES. The results showed a correlation between the methods.

“Chemical dosing based on reliable real-time data brings stability to the process, which is very important because it avoids drift and optimizes both yield and quality while minimizing cost,” Sami Heikkinen, site manager at the Keliber lithium chemical plant, said in the release.

Fortuna Silver stock tanks as Mexico challenges environmental approvals for San Jose mine

MINING.COM Staff Writer | January 5, 2023 | 

San José silver mine in in the southern portion of the Mexican state of Oaxaca. (Image courtesy of Fortuna Silver Mines.)

Fortuna Silver Mine stock fell 11% on Thursday after a decision to re-asses the extension of the San Jose mine Environmental Impact Authorization.


The company reported that its Mexican subsidiary, Compania Minera Cuzcatlan, has received written notice of a resolution issued by the Secretaria de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (SEMARNAT), re-assessing the 12-year extension to the environmental impact authorization (EIA) for the mine, located in Oaxaca.

According to the company, SEMARNAT has issued two multi-year environmental authorizations over the last four years for the mine and tailings facility.

After the grant of the EIA extension on December 2021, SEMARNAT suggested that it had made a typographical error in the EIA extension and that the correct term was two years. As a result, Minera Cuzcatlan initiated legal proceedings to challenge and revoke the alleged typographical error.

On November 2022, Fortuna Silver announced that the Mexican Federal Administrative Court had issued a judgment in favour of the company and re-confirmed the term of the EIA extension for San Jose for 12 years.

On Monday, however, Minera Cuzcatlan received another resolution from SEMARNAT, which annuls the EIA extension and requires SEMARNAT to re-assess its decision to extend the EIA by conducting a review.

“It is incomprehensible that we find ourselves again having to contest a controversial resolution issued by SEMARNAT. This specific authorization, one of the many under which San Jose operates, was confirmed by the Federal Court last November, with a ruling in our favor against SEMARNAT,” said Jorge A. Ganoza, Fortuna Silver CEO.

Minera Cuzcatlan said it would initiate legal proceedings against SEMARNAT to contest and revoke the annulment of the EIA.

The San Jose Mine was commissioned in July 2011 and began commercial production in September 2011 at 1,000 tonnes per day. In 2021, the mine produced 6.43 million ounces of silver and 39,406 ounces of gold.

Activists fighting coal mine expansion in Germany in standoff with police

Staff Writer | January 8, 2023 

Activists protesting the expansion of RWE’s open-pit coal mine in Lützerath, Germany. (Image by Lützerath Bleibt, Twitter.)

Activists in Germany were in a standoff with the police on Sunday, as they protested against the expansion of RWE Group’s Garzweiler open-pit coal mine on the western side of the country.


The expansion demands the demolition of Lützerath, an abandoned village 40 kilometres west of Cologne. Since there are no permanent residents there, it has been declared an exclusion zone and police are allowed to do what it takes to remove people or materials hindering its clearance, which is scheduled to start on January 10, 2023.

According to DW, some activists began occupying the town two years ago but as the deadline to demolish it approaches, more protesters have joined the action and are now estimated at 1,500 people. They live in tents, treehouses, huts and other precarious accommodations.

On the other side of the skirmish, about 100 police keep dismantling the blockades the protesters set up and delaying buses taking supporters to Lützerath.

For the activists, the tiny village has become an emblem of the fight against doing business as usual, seriously comitting to the Paris Agreement and, thus, keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels.

Back in December, RWE, the German government and the state of North Rhine-Westphalia ratified a deal that pushes the country to phase out coal by 2030 instead of the previously set 2038 deadline. The agreement saved several villages from destruction but Lützerath wasn’t among them.

RWE has said that coal from Lützerath and nearby areas will be needed to supply power stations from 2024 onwards, as other mines in the region continue to shut down and Germany reduces its dependence on Russian energy imports.

Researchers solve major issues blocking development of lithium-sulphur batteries

Staff Writer | January 9, 2023 | 

Sulphur. (Reference image by Robert M. Lavinsky, Wikimedia Commons.)

In a new study, researchers at the US Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory advanced sulphur-based battery research by creating a layer within the battery that adds energy storage capacity while nearly eliminating a traditional problem with sulphur batteries that caused corrosion.


In their paper, the scientists explain that a promising battery design pairs a sulphur-containing cathode with a lithium metal anode. In between those components is the electrolyte, or the substance that allows ions to pass between the two ends of the battery.

Early lithium-sulphur (Li-S) batteries did not perform well because sulphur species (polysulfides) dissolved into the electrolyte, causing its corrosion. This polysulfide shuttling effect negatively impacts battery life and lowers the number of times the battery can be recharged.

To prevent this polysulfide shuttling, prior research focused on placing a redox-inactive interlayer between the cathode and anode. The term ​“redox-inactive” means the material does not undergo reactions like those in an electrode. But this protective interlayer is heavy and dense, reducing energy storage capacity per unit weight for the battery. It also does not adequately reduce shuttling.

To address this, the Argonne group developed a porous sulphur-containing interlayer. Tests in the laboratory showed initial capacity about three times higher in Li-S cells with this active, as opposed to inactive, interlayer. More impressively, the cells with the active interlayer maintained high capacity over 700 charge-discharge cycles.

“Previous experiments with cells having the redox-inactive layer only suppressed the shuttling, but in doing so, they sacrificed the energy for a given cell weight because the layer added extra weight,” said Guiliang Xu, a chemist and co-author of the study. ​“By contrast, our redox-active layer adds to energy storage capacity and suppresses the shuttle effect.”

To further understand the redox-active layer, the team conducted experiments at the 17-BM beamline of Argonne’s Advanced Photon Source. The data gathered from exposing cells with this layer to X-ray beams allowed them to ascertain the interlayer’s benefits.

The data confirmed that a redox-active interlayer can reduce shuttling, reduce detrimental reactions within the battery and increase the battery’s capacity to hold more charge and last for more cycles. ​

“These results demonstrate that a redox-active interlayer could have a huge impact on Li-S battery development,” said Wenqian Xu, a beamline scientist at APS. ​“We’re one step closer to seeing this technology in our everyday lives.”

Going forward, the team wants to evaluate the growth potential of the redox-active interlayer technology. ​“We want to try to make it much thinner, much lighter,” Guiliang Xu said.

Scientists one step closer to turning coal into graphite

Staff Writer | January 8, 2023 |

Coal. (Reference image by James St. John, Flickr.)

A team at Ohio University carried out a series of simulations showing how coal can be converted to valuable—and carbon-neutral—materials like graphite and carbon nanotubes.


Using the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center’s Bridges-2 system, the researchers simulated coal and graphite in computer software and recreated the coal-to-graphite conversion virtually. Generations of scientists know that, at least in theory, it is possible to convert coal to graphite if the fossil fuel is put under enough pressure at a high enough temperature.

Pure graphite is a series of sheets made up of six-carbon rings. A special type of chemical bond called ‘aromatic bond’ holds these carbons together.

In aromatic bonds, pi electrons float above and below the rings. These “slippery” electron clouds cause the sheets to slide easily past each other. Pencil “lead”—a low-grade form of graphite—leaves a mark on paper because the sheets slip off of each other and stick to the paper.

Aromatic bonds have another virtue, important in electronic technology. The pi electrons move easily from ring to ring and sheet to sheet. This makes graphite conduct electricity, even though it is not a metal.

Coal, by comparison, is messy chemically. Unlike the strictly two-dimensional nature of a graphite sheet, it has connections in three dimensions. It also contains hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur, and other atoms that might disrupt graphite formation.

Simplified coal

To begin their studies, David Drabold and his team created a simplified “coal” that consisted of only carbon atoms in random positions. By exposing this simplified coal to pressure and high temperature—about 3,000 Kelvin, or nearly 5,000 Fahrenheit—they could take a first step in studying its conversion to graphite.

“To push out the amorphous-graphite paper we needed to do a lot of serious analysis,” said Chinonso Ugwumadu, a doctoral student in Drabold’s group. “Compared to other systems which we have, Bridges is the fastest and most accurate. Our home systems … take about two weeks to simulate 160 atoms. With Bridges, we can run 400 atoms over six to seven days using density functional theory.”

At first, the Ohio scientists carried out their simulations using basic physical and chemical principles via density functional theory. This accurate but calculation-heavy approach required many parallel computations. Later, they shifted their calculations to a new software tool, GAP (Gaussian approximation potential), which uses machine learning to carry out essentially the same computations much more quickly.

Their results were more complicated than the team had expected. The sheets did form. But the carbon atoms didn’t entirely develop simple, six-carbon rings. A fraction of the rings had five carbons; others had seven.

The non-six-carbon rings posed an interesting wrinkle, in more ways than one. While six-carbon rings are flat, five- and seven-membered carbon rings pucker, but in opposite senses of “positive and negative curvature.”

The scientists might have expected these puckers to ruin the formation of the graphite sheets. But sheets formed anyway, possibly because pentagons and heptagons balanced each other in the simulations. The sheets were technically amorphous graphite because they weren’t purely six-ringed. But again, they formed layers.

Carbon nanotubes

In another series of simulations, Ugwumadu followed up on his work with Rajendra Thapa to study molecules rather than solids. The conditions in these sims caused the sheets to curve in on themselves. Instead of sheets, they formed nested amorphous carbon nanotubes (CNTs)—a series of single-atomic-layer tubes, one inside another.

CNTs have been hot in materials science lately, as they are in effect tiny wires that can be used to conduct electricity at incredibly small scales. Other promising applications of CNTs include fuel cell catalysis, the production of supercapacitors and lithium-ion batteries, electromagnetic interference shielding, biomedical sciences, and nano-neuroscience.

One important facet of the CNT work was that Ugwumadu studied how amorphous wrinkles in the tube walls affect the movement of electricity through the structure. In materials science, every “bug” is also a “feature”—engineers may be able to use such irregularities to tune the behaviour of a given CNT to match the exact requirements needed in a new electronic device.

The group continues to study the conversion of carbon atoms to graphite and related materials.

Europe needs to invest over €300 billion in the next two years to reach climate goals — study

Staff Writer | January 10, 2023 | 

Solar panels in Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, France. (Reference image by Christian Pinatel de Salvator, Wikimedia Commons.)

Europe needs to invest €302 billion annually to build relevant infrastructure over the next two years if it wants to reach its goals of becoming climate neutral by 2050 and reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero, a new study has shown.


According to the paper published in the journal Nature Climate Change, major investments in power generation from renewable energies, electricity grids, storage devices and other infrastructure are urgently required across the EU and neighbouring countries.

To reach this conclusion, the authors of the study built on 56 relevant technology and investment studies from academia, industry and the public sector. They focused on the countries in the EU but also took into account data on the UK, Norway and Switzerland.

In their view, the most dramatic increase in the need for investment is in power generation from renewable energies.

“In order to drive forward the decarbonization of all areas of life, around 75 billion euros need to be invested in solar and wind power plants in the coming years. This is 24 billion euros more per year than in the recent past,” Bjarne Steffen, a professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich and co-author of the study, said in a media statement.

The situation is similar when it comes to the expansion of distribution networks and railways. In these areas, too, 40% to 60% additional financial flows are required compared to the 2016–2020 period to expand electrification and shift traffic from road to rail.

Steffen and his co-author Lena Klaaßen also noted that the war in Ukraine is reinforcing these trends further.

“To import as little gas as possible from Russia, Europe would have to invest around 10 billion euros more per year in solar energy and wind power. In comparison, significantly less investment—around 1.5 billion euros per year—is needed in additional natural gas infrastructure such as LNG terminals,” Steffen said.

According to the paper, fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas are likely to tie up less capital in the future in Europe. The investment required in conventional power plants in particular is set to fall by 70% within the space of a few years.
New policies

Klaaßen pointed out that the money to make such big investments is readily available in Europe — given the size of the continent’s equity and bond markets. The main challenge, however, is to put the necessary political policies in place quickly enough to ensure that capital flows into the right projects.

“Political measures should be tailored to funding in those sectors where there is the greatest need for investment,” she explained. “For example, existing regulations in the EU focus on identifying sustainable securities, despite the fact that important climate-relevant infrastructure is not at all financed via the equity markets.”

The researcher mentioned that the expansion of renewable energies, in contrast, is often made possible by private investors such as pension funds and banks. Yet, the data show that the public sector could minimize its risk through revenue warranties and by making approval procedures as quick and predictable as possible.

Carbon-capture plants also have harmful emissions — but there is a solution

Staff Writer | January 5, 2023

Coal-fired power plant in Germany. (Reference image by Arnold Paul, Wikimedia Commons.)

A group of scientists has come up with a machine-learning solution for forecasting amine emissions from carbon-capture plants using experimental data from a stress test at an actual plant in Germany.


In a paper published in the journal Science Advances, the researchers explain that amines are compounds used in the chemical processes of carbon-capture plants and natural gas processing and refining plants. Amines are also used in certain pharmaceuticals, epoxy resins, and dyes.

The problem is that amines could also be potentially harmful to the environment as well as a health hazard, making it essential to mitigate their impact. This requires accurate monitoring and predicting of a plant’s amine emissions, which has proven to be no easy feat since carbon-capture plants are complex and differ from one another.

This is where the new development comes in.

Tested in Niederhauẞen, on one of the largest coal-fired power plants in Germany, the solution was used for a full year to monitor a slipstream that is sent from the power station into a carbon capture pilot plant.

Stress test

The scientists created a stress test to study amine emissions under different process conditions. “We developed an experimental campaign to understand how and when amine emissions would be generated. But some of our experiments also caused interventions of the plant’s operators to ensure the plant was operating safely,” Susana Garcia, co-author of the study, said in a media statement.

These interventions led to the question of how to interpret the data. Are the amine emissions the result of the stress test itself, or have the interventions of the operators indirectly affected the emissions? This was further complicated by a general lack of understanding of the mechanisms behind amine emissions.

“In short, we had an expensive and successful campaign that showed that amine emissions can be a problem, but no tools to further analyze the data,” study co-author Berend Smit said. “When Susana Garcia mentioned this to me, it sounded indeed like an impossible problem to solve. But she also mentioned that they measured everything every five minutes, collecting many data.”

Looking for patterns

With the help of PhD student Kevin Maik Jablonka, the group developed a machine-learning approach that turned the amine emissions puzzle into a pattern-recognition problem.

“We wanted to know what the emissions would be if we did not have the stress test but only the operators’ interventions,” Smit explained. “This is a similar issue as we can have in finance; for example, if you want to evaluate the effect of changes in the tax code, you would like to disentangle the effect of the tax code from, say, interventions caused by the crisis in Ukraine.”

In the next step, Jablonka used powerful machine learning to predict future amine emissions from the plant’s data.

With this model, the team was able to predict the emissions caused by the interventions of the operators and then disentangle them from those induced by the stress test. They were also able to use the model to run all kinds of scenarios for reducing these emissions.

The conclusion of this work was described as “surprising”. As it turned out, the pilot plant had been designed for pure amine, but the measuring experiments were carried out on a mixture of two amines: 2-amino-2-methyl-1-propanol and piperazine. The scientists found out that those two amines respond in opposite ways: reducing the emission of one increases the emissions of the other.

“I am very enthusiastic about the potential impact of this work; it is a completely new way of looking at a complex chemical process,” Smit said. “This type of forecasting is not something one can do with any of the conventional approaches, so it may change the way we operate chemical plants.”