Although a qualified Electrical Engineer for 21 years now, I have spent little time in my professional career "Engineering" anything, but still have a keen interest and understanding of engineering and science.
I once was appointed to the role of Plant Manager at an automotive parts manufacturing facility which had recently undergone a complete sacking of all the previous management due to a huge argument with our main customer (Toyota)
3 supervisors, an assistant manager, quality inspector and previous plant manager were all sacked 2 weeks before I started.
I had to hit the ground running as we were in danger of losing our contract and big changes were necessary to improve quality consistency and maintain steady state "just in time" production.
Everything was in disarray, pc's had been wiped in revenge, paperwork was missing and shredded... It was a disaster.
As I walk around the plant on the first day (95 employees) I was given a heads up by one of the production leading hands about how the place ran, what the problems were in the past, what could be done immediately to improve things.
I could tell, the place was at a low morale wise as everybody knew they were close to losing their jobs, even though most of them worked damn hard.
On my walk around, I bumped into a Vietnamese guy mid 20's a bit rough looking, but ready with a nod and smile when I caught his attention.
I asked the leading hand who this chap was and was told that he was the store man and kind of a jack of all trades and was moved from job to job as was often required in a lean manufacturing facility, but most of the time he just drove the forklift and loaded and unloaded trucks.
At the end of my first day, the workers filed past as they punched their cards into the time clock and one of the last to leave was the store man, he peered in the door and said anything I can do before I clock off boss?
I looked at him and said "mate starting tomorrow If you can tell me everything that's wrong with this place, and everything that's good about it that would be a good start"
"No worries boss I can do that" he smiled and went home.
Starting the next day that forklift driver taught me everything about that place, what was what, what worked, what didn't, why the previous managers had failed, how to save money, increase productivity, get more out of the workers, you name it he had an intelligent answer for everything and his English was terrible, but I still understood what he was saying.
Within 1 day I knew how our production scheduling system worked, our inventory system, and every other thing I needed to know, to begin to turn things around.
Within 3 months we did turn that place around, became profitable again and increased productivity in every single area.
I offered this guy a job as Supervisor and he wasn't interested, because he preferred driving his forklift.
In just one day a forklift driver taught me everything I needed to know about a complex high technology manufacturing facility.
The moral of this story is... The broom sweep at Yerostigas probably knew more than his boss, and probably had better ideas because he was working at the coal face.
To imply that because senior management etc had left that there wasn't anything worth acquiring / learning is patently rubbish. The best people to get ideas from are the ones getting their hands dirty.
I think it would be reasonably safe to assume that while Jet Fuel may not have been "refined" here, it was "produced" here and that's the main point. There may also be rules regarding fuel quality analysis that could not be carried out here in oz.
In my career I've discovered that the best path to new discoveries is through "experimentation and observation followed by modification"
If you want to develop worlds best technology, there is no point in running the same experiment for 10 years, you need to change it, modify it, try new ideas, innovate and assess the outcomes.
Your arguments while in some ways have a certain amount of validity, are lost on me I'm afraid. I don't agree.
Underground Coal gasification is not new technology... But that doesnt mean that there aren't better more efficient methods.
What you are in effect doing is implying that the management have been running a pilot plant and employing associated staff technical and otherwise and after all these years not one of those staff have become jaded and exposed the UCG scandal that you purport exists in your post.
Why waste your time trying to save hapless investors here now? Where were you when the SP was $3.30
Ahhh I see....
whoooweee!!! Can you smell that ? Thats some bad gas!!!
LNC Price at posting:
71.0¢ Sentiment: Hold Disclosure: Held
