KiOR: The inside true story of a company gone wrong

Culture Clash

But De Deken was not finished. He aimed his next comment squarely at the management culture of KiOR.

“What is even more worrisome is that genuine efforts to establish a dialog about relevant technical issues have been met with systematic attempts to downplay or dismiss virtually every issue as soon as it is brought up. Clearly, the creation of lasting value is not possible without also developing credible, sound and robust technology. KiOR’s obvious lack of commitment to building a strong and much-needed R&D effort to make this possible is a further indication that KiOR is not really serious about developing successful technology.”

Sources familiar with the company’s operations and internal communications have confirmed to The Digest that although the company did not disclose internally the reasons for De Deken’s resignation, “most persons involved knew the real reasons, since Jacques was also strongly objecting the plans under discussion at that time, to use the same BCC Technology as described in the ITQ report, at the FCC Pilot Plant of KBR Corporation in Houston, as he was expecting it to be a waste of monies and valuable time of KiOR.”

The move to the KBR pilot plant for testing

One reason why De Deken’s resignation came at a difficult moment was that he was closely involved in negotiating and making all the technical arrangements to test the BCC Technology at pilot scale, and the company had expected to start the testing in mid-September 2008. As the state of Mississippi summarized in its lawsuit:

The first technical step to commercializing the technology would be to develop a pilot project, for which KiOR needed a suitable laboratory space. The pilot scale unit would produce several liters of biocrude a day, less than a barrel. A second step, which would need to follow quickly on the first, was the development of a smaller, laboratory-scale unit, producing in one employee’s words “a few cubic centimeters per run, with many runs a day that will allow us to look at a lot of variables” in terms of feedstocks, catalysts, and pretreatment techniques. This unit would pre-screen catalysts and feedstocks before these entered the pilot lab in larger quantities. Once the pilot unit was up and running, KiOR would move toward the development of a demonstration project, producing between 10 and 100 barrels of biocrude per day. 

KBR, a major oil refining engineering concern, maintained a FCC pilot unit that was located very close to KiOR’s offices in Houston, and their unit was selected for KiOR process and catalyst testing, scheduled for September 2008.