Your summary sounds very logical and probable SGE - thanks for your input.

I'd also suggest that the typical cycle time it takes a large corporation to approve an expenditure of millions of dollars is long. My experience is that such expenditures take months to approve - once someone, layers in this case, say it's actually needed. It could take longer if the line item was not specifically included in the current annual (or possibly quarterly) budget. This type of expenditure would not be considered an emergy, thus the full ponderous corporate process may likely prevail.