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The Oil v. Alcohol Argument (TIME, June 1) has obscured and delayed the buna program at its raw-materials base. It was raging hotter than ever last week when Leon Henderson's OPA (presumably hoping to pick up some much-needed Congressional good will) suddenly came out on the alcohol side. But it is now decided: for the 700,000 tons of buna for 1944, alcohol (from wheat or molasses) will contribute some 220,000 tons—about all the alcohol producers can spare from their commitments for explosives. Yet, even though the program is set, the arguments continue.
The soundest basis for the wheat-alcohol argument is that the U.S. has more wheat than it knows what to do with. Led by Iowa's Senator Guy M. Gillette, the farm bloc with all kinds of "expert" testimony to back it up, insists that its butadiene is cheaper than butadiene from petroleum products—which appears to be true only so long as the wheat is considered a commodity delivered free to the distillers' doorsteps. The farm bloc further contends that butadiene from alcohol is chemically a more direct process. This is true; several steps necessary to the petroleum process can be shortcut.
But petroleum-butadiene plants need around 300 tons of steel and 89 units of compressor horsepower per 1,000 tons of butadiene capacity; alcohol-butadiene plants need about the same amount of steel, 169 units of compressor horsepower, plus 27 tons of copper—the scarcest metal of all—v. almost no copper for oil. In the face of this ruckus, the final decision of the rubbermen is that there is no sense in building any new raw-material capacity (even if it could be built fast) as long as petroleum and alcohol between them can fill this bill.
But the wheat hullabaloo has nevertheless served a useful purpose: as the sights for the buna program were raised again & again after Pearl Harbor, they finally pointed so high that the capacity of the petroleum industry to produce suddenly became a question. The 220,000 tons of wheat-alcohol rubber will make up the difference at the same time that it helps overrule the farm bloc's conviction that big business has been blocking it out of the program.
Petroleum Technologies messed up the buna raw-materials program, too. The basic refinery raw material for butadiene is butylene, and butylene can be had either circuitously by extracting it from butane (natural gas) or directly, by skimming it off refinery gas. For the first five months after Pearl Harbor it looked as if the refineries couldn't skim off nearly enough butylene without at the same time losing out on their necessary production of high octane gas. That threw them back, willy-nilly, on butane, even though it takes much more steel and money.
Then Standard Oil (N.J.) stumbled on a new refinery trick (TIME, June 1) that released much more butylene with no corresponding loss in high octane gas, and a big piece of the program was shifted again.