Word: raws
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...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...
...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...
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...
...Army Ordnance; aviation gasoline to the Office of the Petroleum Coordinator. Something at last began to happen about six weeks ago. Its foundation was the sober recognition on everyone's part that 1) the rubber situation was so dire as to threaten the war effort itself; 2) the raw materials situation as a whole (particularly in steel) was so dire that the rubber program had to be frozen, and on a strictly string-saving basis at that...
...Future is Still Clouded. Mass production of a complicated chemical product split into many component parts can produce all kinds of unexpected bugs. Though at least theoretically, raw materials and equipment are not as hideously short as rubber itself, any holdup there could wreck the program all over again...