Word: bbl
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Those days are gone with perestroika. Like its trade with the former Comecon countries of Eastern Europe, Moscow's deals with Havana are now on a hard- currency basis at prevailing world prices. Under a 1991 agreement worth $3.8 billion, the Soviet Union is to deliver 70 million bbl. of oil to Cuba and, in exchange, receive 4 million tons of sugar, plus citrus fruit, nickel and medical supplies...
Though the bookkeeping is in dollars, the deal is still mainly barter, and prices are adjusted by exchanging different quantities. For example, the Soviets now pay 18 instead of 27 bbl. of oil for a ton of Cuban sugar. Moscow still delivers military and industrial equipment free, but no one is quite sure what it is worth. Western intelligence agencies price it at about $1 billion a year, but as Cuba's Deputy Foreign Minister, Jose Raul Viera, once described it, the equipment is "junk no one buys...
...says it is "a great fantasy" to think aid to Cuba has much effect on the Soviet economy. "What we give Cuba is a drop in the sea," he says. It is also apparently beyond the Soviet Union's present capabilities. Last year Moscow promised to deliver 100 million bbl. of oil but managed only 70 million. For 1991 the Soviets are to match the 70 million, but Cuban trade experts doubt it will happen. "We can no longer count on them," says a senior official in Havana...
Saudi officials even claim that the country is slightly strapped for cash. The government has been forced to borrow $7 billion to fulfill commitments to the U.S.-led alliance. Despite a wartime surge in oil production from 5.5 million to 8 million bbl. a day, Western economists estimate a budget deficit of $25 billion this year. Skittish about both the expense and foreign entanglements, Fahd has reneged on an agreement to base a Pan-Arab defense force composed primarily of Egyptian and Syrian troops on Saudi soil. The plan envisaged an exchange of Egyptian and Syrian military manpower for economic...
...waters of the gulf, the oil spill now estimated by the Saudi government at 0.5 million to 3 million bbl. has been partially contained, but not cleaned up. Although the thickening sludge has killed thousands of seabirds, debilitated the Saudi shrimp industry and threatened plants and coral reefs along the coast of Kuwait and northern Saudi Arabia, favorable winds have so far kept it well north of the rich marine ecosystems in the bay of Bahrain. These marshy flats are the breeding grounds of large numbers of fish and shrimp and the favorite habitat of the rare dugong, the cousin...