Word: basins
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...President has few viable policy options. He seems likely to reaffirm U.S. commitment to the Carribean Basin plan the White House unveiled last spring. That program had a handful of promising long-range features designed to shore up Latin American economies. For example, most basin exports to the U.S. were to be duty-free, technology transfers were to increase and Washington was going to help bail out financially strapped countries like Honduras and Costa Rica with additional non-military aid. But most of these measures have bogged down in Congress, where senators and representatives give what gifts they...
...REAGAN TRIED to negotiate the problems in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala instead of confronting them head on with muscle, military aid could be cut significantly. Then Congress would have funds to finance the positive measures of the Carribean Basin plan. Similarly, if the U.S. reaches an agreement with Nicaragua, both Costa Rica and Honduras would likely spend less on defense and hence more on immediate economic concerns...
Concern over pollution is one reason the Santa Maria basin was not explored sooner. Only since Interior Secretary James Watt took office in January 1981 have oil companies been encouraged to explore aggressively for new reserves in undeveloped areas. Their recent successes have come after the highly publicized and expensive failures at Georges Bank off the Massachusetts shore and the Baltimore Canyon off New Jersey. Experts have known of petroleum deposits in the California basin for years, but ignored them because early tests showed, inaccurately, that the oil was heavy and hard to refine...
Despite its size, the new find is nearly invisible on a world scale. Should it produce as much as 250,000 bbl. per day (Prudhoe Bay pumps out 1.5 million bbl. daily), the Santa Maria basin would still account for a mere 3% of total U.S. demand. Yet it is part of an encouraging trend that has seen the discovery of new oil in the non-Communist world begin to outstrip consumption. Since 1979, the Western nations have added 112.2 billion bbl. to proven reserves, while they have burned up just 49.4 billion...
More important, the Santa Maria basin will help further reduce the U.S.'s dependence on foreign oil once commercial production begins in 1986. The effects of the discovery may be felt as early as next month's meeting in Vienna of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. According to Oil Analyst Dan Lundberg, editor of the Lundberg Letter, the offshore gusher could lead to more unofficial price cutting by dissident OPEC members, weakening the links in the powerful cartel...