Word: bbl
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Coming the other way, legally, a half-mile-long column of oil tankers stream beneath a giant portrait of Saddam that marks an archway over the desert border. Each day they bring 50,000 bbl. of cut-rate fuel to Amman to sustain the stumbling economy of Jordan...
...employees, burgeoning paperwork, outside investors with varying and not always complementary interests, government requirements -- all conspired to drain the fun out of it. More troubling were the shifts in market forces beyond the company's control. By the spring of 1986, world oil prices had dropped below $15 per bbl. The impetus to seek out alternative fuels withered. Florida Power & Light cut a deal with surrounding Southern utilities to buy inexpensive power from a regional grid; it successfully completed construction of a nuclear plant and signed an enticing deal to buy cheap oil from Venezuela...
...steady rise in oil imports has alarmed many planners and industry strategists, who fear that the nation may be setting itself up for another crisis if war flares again in the Middle East. Domestic production, dropping at the rate of 300,000 bbl. a day, has declined to its lowest level in 40 years. The Congressional Office of Technology Assessment projects that by 2010 the nation could depend on imports for nearly 70% of total supply, an amount that Houston energy consultant Louis Powers estimates will take 36 supertankers a day to deliver. Warns Powers: "The mind...
...many respects, the current slump is an extension of the mid-'80s energy bust that saw prices plummet to $9 per bbl. Just as the region was attempting to diversify out of its energy dependence, the gulf crisis suddenly forced prices to $40 in 1990, spurring some drillers to crank up rigs again. But when the war ended, hopes were dashed just as quickly; prices slid back down, and the small trickle of investment money dried...
...more troubling than price fluctuations and investment patterns is the fact that the U.S. is running out of economically recoverable oil. Known reserves that can be extracted at current market prices have been declining almost steadily for 22 years, and the current supply of 26 billion bbl. would last the nation barely four years at present usage rates. And while vast formations remain untapped, they are in environmentally sensitive areas -- the Alaskan wildlife refuge and offshore California -- that Congress has put off limits...