The Chinese geology study included screening for likely injection zones, he says, which tend to be in areas where there is a heavy concentration of oil.
   "We identified about 26 potential areas and started focusing on where economic development zones are close to those areas," Kmecz says. "We'd make a trip there, take some GPS readings, bring them back to the geologists and do some analyses."
   Dongying is located where the Yellow River meets the ocean, above the Shengli oil field, the second-largest in China.
   Geology and demography did converge to the good, however, given DuPont's sophisticated supply-chain needs.
   "We were looking at infrastructure, obviously, because we're building a greenfield site," says Kmecz. "We were looking in the neighborhood of 1,000 acres [400 hectares]. We have a large landfill requirement, need to be sustainable for 50 years, and need significant buffer around the plant so neighbors would not be at our front doorstep."
   After about 10 months of work, the team narrowed it down to 8-10 candidates. That's when the company's goals and the country's goals began to converge.
   "We involved a number of senior level academics from the academy of science in China," says Kmecz, describing that teaming as key to moving the project forward. "We had to start early on an advocacy effort to explain how to use underground injection for waste materials. This group knew the geology very well, had an understanding of deep wells at that point, and we engaged them to go with us through the selection of the final four. That team worked for about three months, zeroed it down to four, and from there we selected the one."
   Once the site was chosen, the next step was to bring the principal government and planning people to the U.S.
   "There were questions along the lines of "Are you trying to do something here that you wouldn't do in the U.S?'" says Kmecz. "We brought a delegation of about 12 to the U.S., including the vice mayor of the city, the environmental agency, planning commission and folks from the EDZ. We took them to our plant at Delisle in Mississippi, then brought them up to Wilmington [Del., at company headquarters], spent some time with our senior leadership and gave them some time with how our business operates."
   Asked about the "remaining issues' so pointedly referred to by Olson at the November announcement, Kmecz says, "the one we're still working on is advocacy with the local, provincial and state level government around whether this technology is safe and sustainable. We have had significant success so far. We have a pretty high confidence level that will not be an issue for us."
   Chief among other issues, however, is the significant amount of materials that need to be moved in and out of the plant, from ore to coke to chlorine. In Dongying, at least at the outset, trucks will be the primary vehicle, as rail is nearby but mostly used for coal or military supplies. Water was considered, says Kmecz, but it's a shallow bay, and bringing in a 30,000-ton ship was not feasible.
   "We can use trucks, and we've done that before," says Kmecz. "The area we're going to is an old fish farming area. For fish farming in China, they take ground, put in a pit, and fill it up with water. It was on a pretty massive scale at one time. There is nothing out there: no major roads, no rail of any kind. There is not much there, and we wanted to be out there because it was remote from the city. It provides a buffer, but the negative to that is that the infrastructure in terms of road and rail is not there yet," though there is a major power plant about 20 miles from the chosen location.
   "We worked with the local government to get them to agree to move a rail project forward," says Kmecz, who says there is good alignment so far on that project. "They're trying to build a port facility, but with the shallow body of water, they're talking about sending out that pier 10-15 kilometers [6-9 miles] into the bay, to get barges in, not ships. But they do a lot of stuff with conveyors, like in Tianjin, moving bulk materials for miles. It's different from what we're used to, so we're going to have to learn how to adapt to what the local practices are that may be different from our U.S. or other facilities."
   Related to that issue is the dependability of an integrated chain of suppliers.
   "We don't want to own chlorine, but they don't ship it by rail or truck, and they ship it in 1-ton cylinders," says Kmecz, "which for the volume we require would almost be impossible. We've worked with a number of suppliers, and just signed a letter of intent with Huatai to put in a colocated chlor-alkali facility. We'd like to have a cogeneration plant, and they say they're interested in doing that. In the past couple of months, those issues have begun to be resolved."