University of Wyoming chemical petroleum engineers Saeid Mokhatab and Brian Towler say that nanotechnology could "revolutionize" the natural gas industry, making it cleaner and more efficient (i.e. more profitable) from reservoir to exhaust pipe. Yet they're forced to go full-out Jerry Maguire on their industry counterparts.

Help me help you. Help me help you.

A recent University of Wyoming press release indicated that Mokhatab and Towler believe there are many opportunities for the industry to exploit nanotechnology.

Instead, the opportunities could be lost to the industry's "inertia" and its "traditional lack of innovation in the exploration and production sector, a perception of high costs, new risks, and a general lack of awareness of the benefits of nanotechnology."

Is this the Jerry Maguire scene we can expect to see playing out for the next 5 or 10 years? Researchers saying, "Help me help you," and corporate energy companies holding out their hands to government saying, "Show me the money!"?

Harry Jaeger, gasification editor of Gas Turbine World Magazine, recently lamented the popular notion that only the near-zero emissions FutureGen project can prove-up coal-gasification at commercial scale.

That's a scary proposition, Jaeger said. FutureGen is intended to be a research and development campus, not a strictly commercial demonstration.

There's no reason why industry shouldn't develop "more reasonable near-term" commercial design targets, according to Jaeger.

Truth is, few companies in the industry want to step forward and be the FOAKer (first of a kind) on the block - the company first to employ a new technology. There are financial risks, inevitable kinks.

And that's not all. Do-gooders who go out and employ FOAK technology in the commercial marketplace also set the bar higher from a regulatory standpoint.

I recently asked John Corra, director of the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality, whether building the first integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) coal-based power plant in the state would make IGCC technology the new BACT (Best Available Control Technology). Corra said he supposed it might.

Remember the reception Jerry Maguire received when he circulated his "mission statement" at Sports Management International? He left with a goldfish.

OK, Renee Zellweger followed him out the door. But that was Hollywood.

Energy reporter Dustin Bleizeffer can be reached at (307) 577-6069 or dustin.bleizeffer@trib.com.