Word: crude
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...than massive exports as does China's. But there's nowhere to hide from higher oil prices, and several factors make the crunch particularly painful in Asia. The vast majority of countries in the region are net importers of oil. Only Malaysia and Vietnam are able to produce enough crude to be net sellers. In addition, several Asian governments for years have spent billions of dollars subsidizing fuel costs to keep it cheap for their poor and often quarrelsome citizens. But oil is now so expensive that subsidies and price controls are increasingly impossible to maintain. Over the last...
...regardless of the intentions of politicians, subsidies and price controls tend to produce unintended consequences. They distort normal consumption patterns and subvert the law of supply and demand. When oil supplies are low and crude prices rise, consumption falls, bringing prices back down as demand and supply balance out. But if consumers are insulated from the market, paying an artificially low price for fuel, they tend to use as much or even more - which strains supplies further and forces oil prices even higher...
...never mind that less than 10% of the adult population owns a car). Says Rajiv Pratap Rudy, a spokesman for the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party: "This is an economic terror unleashed on the people of this country." Yet the government may be forced into further hikes should crude prices remain high. "There is still a large uncovered gap and the recent price rises announced will not cover that," says Rajiv Kumar, director and chief executive of the New Delhi-based Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations...
...price in the U.S. has jumped 77%.) Observers say China will probably stand pat at the pump until after the Beijing Olympic Games in August. That could keep Chinese happily burning the midnight oil - and keep global oil prices high, since growing demand from China has contributed significantly to crude's price run-up in the past few years, according to economists. It's too early to say, but the recent spike in oil prices could be another nail in the coffin in which Asia's sizzling economic run of the past several years is finally laid to rest...
Soon after the first long-distance pipelines were laid in the Northeast in the late 1870s and early 1880s, the first oil tankers were allowed to pass through the Suez Canal, and the modern shipping system was born. Today crude oil travels in tankers that can carry up to 4 million bbl. With daily world demand at about 85 million bbl., petroleum represents about a third of all international cargo. And even though the commodity is also measured in kiloliters (in Japan) and metric tons (in Russia), thanks to whiskey, the units are always converted to the 42-gal. barrel...