Word: aruba
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Surinam and the six Antilles islands (Curaçao, Aruba, Bonaire, St. Eustatius, Saba and half of St. Martin) have been Dutch colonies since the 17th century. Dutchmen gained possession of the islands by driving out the Spaniards, who didn't even put up a fight. When the Dutch also tried to push the British out of the part of Guiana now called Surinam, the British countered by seizing New Amsterdam (Manhattan). Later, in the 1667 Peace of Breda, the Dutch traded off New Amsterdam (bought from the Indians for $24) for 55,000 square miles in Guiana...
...until 40 years ago, when vast bauxite deposits were found in Surinam, and Venezuela's Lake Maracaibo oilfields were opened. During World War II, Surinam provided 60% of the U.S.'s bauxite needs for aluminum. Huge oil refineries on Curaçao and Aruba processed 72% of the crude produced in Venezuela. With this new prosperity, the Negroes, East Indians, Hindus and expatriate Netherlanders in the colonies (230,000 in Surinam, 174,000 on the islands) developed political ambitions. Political parties sprang up at war's end to demand more autonomy for the territories. In 1948 their...
...Aruba, Netherlands Antilles
...employees have come to regard him as the boss. But Jersey Standard is too big to be a one-man show. No one man could oversee everything. Jersey Standard, which operates in 115 countries, has 245 subsidiaries with their 41 refineries, including the world's second largest at Aruba, 11,000 miles of pipelines and the largest U.S. fleet of private tankers...
Long lines of tankers once fanned out from Aruba to Europe, the U.S. and Pacific. Now, almost all of Aruba's and South America's refinery production of 750,000 barrels of oil a day is going through the Panama Canal to the Pacific; only a thin stream of crude is going north...