Word: crude
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Natural gas is in scarce supply. Crude-oil production is winding down. The last nuclear power plant was ordered in July 1973. No meaningful alternative fuels exist. In short, Americans are heading toward their first major energy crunch since the 1970s. The early warning sign: a shortage of natural gas last winter sent home-heating bills spiraling upward. They are expected to keep rising. Higher prices are erasing jobs. The effects will ripple through the economy...
Abundant supplies of crude oil worldwide are no bargain either. Americans are paying inflated prices for gasoline and other petroleum products. The bloated bills will more than wipe out the savings from this year's multibillion-dollar tax cut. For all this, you can thank more than three decades of bungled energy policies by a succession of Congresses and Presidents. Get ready for more bungling...
...consumers, the second part of this one-two punch is exaggerated oil prices. While the world is swimming in crude oil, it already trades at an inflated price of $30 a bbl., a level essentially dictated by Saudi Arabia with the approval of the U.S. government. This translates into swollen prices for gasoline, home heating oil and other petroleum products. What's worse is that because of Congress's three decades of fumbled energy legislation, Americans have become more vulnerable than ever to an interruption in foreign supply that would truly send prices into orbit and cripple the U.S. economy...
...competing interests tend to cancel one another out over time, leaving the nation with no coherent direction on energy. Lawmakers launch programs to develop alternative-energy supplies but later quietly cut or eliminate the funding so there are no realistic alternative sources. They enact legislation offering incentives to stimulate crude-oil production in the U.S., when the politicians know--or should know--that the programs will not do so in any significant way. They encourage utilities, businesses and industries to shift to natural gas, then fail to ensure sufficient supplies of the fuel. The lawmakers refuse to make the tough...
...Taliban, however, show no intention of heeding his crude warning. In the past month, militants belonging to or affiliated with the Taliban have launched scores of rockets at U.S. military bases and detonated explosives in several Afghan cities. They have ambushed American and Afghan troops and torched newly rebuilt schools. During the last week of June, Taliban combatants temporarily seized government offices in a remote part of Zabul province. On June 30 a Taliban operative planted an antipersonnel mine in a Kandahar mosque run by a pro-government cleric; the subsequent blast wounded 17 worshipers. The next day, an anti...