Word: bbl
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...illusion that the Saudis would not use their oil weapon again if they felt they had to. Moreover the Saudis presently feel that the US owes them a great deal for having increased oil production twice during the past two years-and at a price that is $4 per bbl. below that of the other major oil producers...
Meanwhile, the soaring cost of OPEC oil, which has climbed by 160% in the past two years, to an average $35 per bbl., has spurred conservation. In the U.S., petroleum consumption is down more than 8% from 1979 levels, and imports have dropped by 20%, to 6.3 million bbl. daily...
...these developments, a worldwide mini-glut of oil is appearing, and some petroleum prices have at long last begun to ease. On the bellwether international "spot" market, where small amounts of crude are traded at free market rates, prices have slipped from a high of more than $41 per bbl. late last year to a current level of $37 per bbl...
Still, the spot market's softness probably does not foreshadow lower fuel costs for consumers. The mini-glut is nearly microscopic: there is an estimated surplus of no more than 800,000 bbl., out of a total non-Communist worldwide production of about 53 million bbl. per day. "It is absurd to talk of a glut," says one West German oilman. "So long as any one of a number of oil-producing nations can create shortages, the world's energy supply hangs by an exceedingly thin thread...
Behind all this, like a silent case of hypertension, was the huge climb in international oil consumption: 3.7 million bbl. a day in 1950, 34.2 million bbl. a day in 1973. Goodman's paper chase leads to Venezuela, where an intellectual oil minister named Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonzo was having heretical ideas. First: oil, a finite resource, should be conserved...