Word: bbl
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Throughout Central America and the Caribbean, governments are benefiting from a remarkable spirit of generosity on the part of oil-rich Venezuela, a founding member of OPEC and, with 2.2 million bbl. per day, currently the second largest producer in the cartel. In the Dominican Republic, Venezuelan money is helping to finance the construction of a $64 million hydroelectric project, housing, and a $2.3 million alcohol distillery. The tiny island state of St. Lucia (pop. 120,000) has opened a $400,000 asphalt plant, courtesy of Caracas. In Panama, officials are planning to erect a $100 million bridge to span...
...Venezuela's riches-$8 billion in foreign currency reserves, at least 18 billion bbl. in proven petroleum reserves-some observers are skeptical about the country's ability to sustain its good intentions toward its neighbors. Venezuela's own economic house is not totally in order. Unemployment is estimated at 12%, inflation at 15%. One reason for the economy's woes is that Herrera Campíns' predecessor, Carlos Andrés Pérez, encouraged a series of ill-advised state enterprises, such as steelmaking and air transport, that last year ran up losses estimated...
...after a week of frantic negotiations behind closed doors in Geneva's luxurious Intercontinental Hotel, the oil ministers broke up in deadlock. Instead of agreeing to a compromise formula that would have reunified OPEC's crazy quilt of prices, which range from a low of $32 per bbl. to a high of $40 per bbl., they left the world's oil game still bedeviled and in disarray...
...consequence of the organization's past excesses. By not curbing the price-gouging tactics of hard-liners such as Nigeria, Libya and Algeria, OPEC has pushed up the cost of crude by almost 90% in the past two years, to an average price in excess of $34 per bbl. That rise has fanned inflation and cut economic growth around the world. More important, it has led businesses and individuals to reduce consumption and start looking to such alternative energy sources as coal, natural gas and solar power...
While global demand has been slipping, OPEC'S share of the market has also been diminishing. Mexico, Britain and other non-OPEC producers have increased their output and become more significant in the world oil trade. From a production level of 31 million bbl. per day in 1979, OPEC's output has dwindled by nearly one-third, to little more than 21 million bbl. daily, its lowest rate since the 1960s. One sign of OPEC's declining clout came last week, when the U.S. Government signed a five-year contract to buy some 110 million bbl...