Word: bbl
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Since war broke out on Jan. 16, crude prices have dropped from $32 per bbl. to $21 per bbl., but oil companies have been slow to cut retail gas prices correspondingly. This has fed anti-oil acrimony, but the industry argues that it is just making up for not hiking prices all the way during last fall's crude run-up. Even so, the average price of a gallon of unleaded is down to $1.18, only 10 cents higher than the day before Iraq invaded Kuwait -- and half that difference is from a nickel-a-gallon federal tax imposed...
...Iraq's and Kuwait's lost production, and the U.S. is getting by on less imported oil, thanks in part to a warm winter and reduced demand driven by the recession. When Iraq and Kuwait start pumping again, the sudden glut could force prices down temporarily to $15 per bbl. or less. That would wash away the industry's profit gains of last quarter and further lower its subpar returns. Warns Unocal chairman Richard Stegemeier: "Instability is coming, and the industry doesn't do well in turbulent times...
Already stunned by the success of allied air raids on war's first day, oil traders were jolted anew when they heard the bogus news that Saddam had been toppled by his officers. The rumor helped send the price of U.S. crude down more than $2 per bbl., capping a one-week fall...
With every favorable turn in the war, oil prices will tend to fall because the world is awash in petroleum. The storage tanks of industrial countries are brimming with 3.5 billion bbl. of crude, a 96-day cache that is the largest in nearly a decade. The supply has built up because of slumping demand in the U.S. and other countries mired in recession, along with furious pumping by energy-rich nations to make up for the boycott of oil from Iraq and Kuwait. % Even without the two countries' combined daily output of 4.3 million bbl., the rest...
...price plunge was aggravated last week because industrial countries, mistakenly anticipating an outbreak of panic buying as war began, gave the go- ahead to tap their emergency petroleum supplies. President Bush authorized the month-long sale of 1.1 million bbl. a day from the 585 million-bbl. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which is stored in salt domes along the Texas and Louisiana coasts. The drawdown will provide some 6% of the U.S.'s daily consumption of 17 million bbl...