Word: crude
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Following a brief spike in the oil markets after Sept. 11, the benchmark price of Brent crude has slipped from around $29 per bbl. to between $21 and $23. Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a leading source of industry analysis, is forecasting a fourth-quarter average price of $23.75. The reason is simple. Even before Sept. 11, the global economy was entering a recession. That recession is now likely to be deeper, though not necessarily longer, as nervous consumers and business executives put off discretionary spending. The impact of a global downturn on the demand for energy "is the dominant factor...
Still, as the war against terrorism continues into the winter, you can count on reading plenty of commentary on the importance of oil security to the American economy. Granted, nobody is likely to justify military action by the need to preserve access to Middle East crude, a common refrain at the time of the Gulf War 10 years ago. There's a pile of rubble in New York City that provides more eloquent justification for armed force. But since Osama bin Laden has referred to the Saudi oilfields as "a large economic power essential for the soon-to-be-established...
...it’s a crude crossroads. One fork is toward the realm of perpetual self-seriousness, the other is more engaged irony,” he says...
Purdy separates the good from the bad irony, and, he explains that many people who said irony was dead did so because no could fathom any more crude mockery of everything after Sept. 11. The problem is apparently that the definition of irony was sloppy to begin with...
...let’s look at supply. The U.S. imports between 50 and 55 percent of the oil it uses, depending on whether you count processing gains and field production in our consumption totals. This is 11.1 million barrels per day (BPD), or the 8.9 million crude plus 2.2 million BPD of refined products. Breaking that down by country and region, we find that 2.5 million BPD come from the Persian Gulf. Not surprisingly, we get 1.6 million BPD from Saudi Arabia, our primary supplier in the region. Quite surprisingly, we buy 0.6 million BPD from Iraq, presumably under restrictive...