Word: bbl
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...want the U.N. to lift sanctions against Baghdad so it can resume exporting oil. But PRESIDENT CLINTON opposes the move -- and not just because Iraq remains a threat. If Iraq starts exporting oil, Administration energy experts warn, the price for crude could fall by nearly half, to $11 per bbl. That would spell trouble for volatile and financially strapped oil exporters such as Russia and Saudi Arabia -- and for 60 oil-patch lawmakers, who begged Clinton for new tax breaks in a White House meeting last week...
...winning an important U.N. concession: a partial reopening of Iraq's oil pipeline through Turkey. Periodically Baghdad will be allowed to "flush" the pipeline of old oil -- which the Turks claim is corroding the pipe -- and fill it with fresh oil. Each flush will yield about 12 million bbl. of marketable oil, which would net Iraq some $50 million, and there could be several such operations every year...
...lucrative connection. State-owned oil giants Elf Aquitaine and Total were the first Western firms to make contact with Baghdad after the war. Iraqi authorities proposed to give the two French companies a rich production monopoly developing the Majnoun Islands and Nahr Umar oilfields, which could produce 1 million bbl. a day. In exchange, the Iraqis wanted the French to lobby for lifting U.N. sanctions. Since then, according to the weekly Canard Enchaine, representatives of the two companies have made more than 40 trips to Baghdad and preliminary contracts have been drawn up. The French government has frozen the deal...
More important, oil prices suddenly slumped as low as $15.31 per bbl., down from a March high just over $21 and the lowest in 3 1/2 years. The immediate reason was that the 12-nation Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, meeting in Vienna just before Thanksgiving, could not agree on a plan to cut production. Output from non-OPEC sources is rising too, and there is a possibility that United Nations sanctions against Iraq will be eased, allowing some Iraqi oil to flow abroad again. All that adds to a heavy surplus of supply over demand...
...drag from the higher taxes and lower spending of the Clinton ((deficit-cutting)) plan." Johnson is worried that oil prices may rebound, but others think they could go lower. The prestigious Middle East Economic Survey sees a chance that they will range between $15 and a mere $10 per bbl...