Word: adds
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Americans-had good reason to worry about what would happen to the supply, and price, of oil. Meeting in Geneva, the OPEC nations raised the price of crude oil by 9%-and that was the good news. The bad news was that they agreed to allow members to add whatever surcharges "they deem justifiable." Saudi Oil Minister Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani, who had argued in vain against the surcharge, predicted that the move could cause a "free-for-all" in the world oil market...
...nations of the Third World, the cartel also moved to allow individual members to stick on whatever price-gouging surcharges and premiums they think they can get away with. That made official policy a tactic that many producing countries have been following all winter anyway. Finally, as if to add insult to financial injury, the OPEC representatives went out of their way to try to put the blame for the increase on the industrial countries, which they chide for not curbing both energy consumption and the inflation that is eroding the value of their petrodollars...
...sales are not moving quite so briskly as they did last autumn. Consumer spending has also begun to slow somewhat, yet inflation, which in February hit an average annual pace of more than 15%, continues unchecked. By Administration estimates, last week's rise in imported oil costs should add another one-quarter to one-half point to the rate...
That estimate may be much too low. Not only will the OPEC action add at least 2? to the already rising costs of gasoline, but as the price goes up, people will demand bigger paychecks from their employers. That will spread the increases through the whole economy, multiplying the impact. The latest OPEC boost will have a direct adverse effect on the nation's balance of payments. Last week the Commerce Department released some cheering figures showing that the trade deficit shrank in February to a 22-month low, in part because of a $700 million decline...
...Department of Energy officials say that Carter's interest in gasohol is largely "symbolic," that he is talking it up mainly to provide some good news amid the Administration's talk of decontrolling crude oil and letting gas prices rise. Yet the presidential push will surely add to gasohol's growing popularity in Washington. Prodded by promoters, Congress last fall passed a law exempting the fuel from the 4?-per-gal. federal tax on gasoline. In January, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that it would permit service stations to sell gasohol instead of unleaded...