Word: crude
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...Middle East, including oil. By 1978 (the most recent period for which complete figures are available) the E.C.'s purchases from the U.S. had jumped a respectable tenfold, to $35 billion. But purchases from the Middle East had soared to $42 billion, a sum spent in large part for crude oil and natural gas. In only two decades, the Middle East had become substantially more important than the U.S. as a Western European trading partner. Even more important, Middle East oil has become absolutely essential to America's allies. Small wonder that Europe and Japan are hesitant about taking...
...more profitable than expected, and future legislatures might increase the $50-a-year formula. Oil price increases could also continue to swell the fund. While most Americans complain bitterly every time OPEC members raise prices, Alaskans have reason to applaud. With the price of domestic oil now decontrolled, Alaskan crude can rise to the world level; thus the state's royalties will grow with each foreign price hike...
Typical of the new trend was Kuwait's announcement two weeks ago that it is cutting the amount of crude sold to British Petroleum from 450,000 bbl. per day to 150,000 bbl. Earlier, Kuwait had agreed to increase sales to the two largely state-owned French oil companies by 85,000 bbl. daily. Said Kuwait's Oil Minister Ali Khalifa Al Sabah after the decision: "If the oil companies don't like it, they may buy their oil elsewhere...
Direct contracts are beginning to cause problems for the big oil companies. The crude-squeezed majors have found themselves increasingly unable to renew delivery agreements with other smaller companies and refiners. Exxon has announced the cancellation of contracts with nonaffiliated customers around the world because it lacks sufficient crude to service them. Complains a Shell Oil executive in Europe: "The majors are becoming the beggars of the oil market, jilted by governments on both sides...
...North Sea oilfields afire to capturing U.S. nuclear plants. In one, a team of thugs heists Manhattan, no less; in another, Muslim-backed bullyboys hold Queen Elizabeth II hostage. The authors tend to go in for archetype casting: scheming Arabs, for example, are now as thick as No. 2 crude, and several new novels are based on the machinations of Carlos, a.k.a. Ilyich Ramirez Sanchez, the shadowy, ubiquitous terrorist mastermind whom the free world's police have been trying to nab for a decade...