Word: crudely
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...economic crises have a tangled skein of causes, but the thread of this one starts in the early '90s. After the Persian Gulf War, as Middle East producers pumped their way to recovery, the price of crude oil dropped steadily, then stayed low for nearly a de- cade, fueling the global economic boom. By early '99, a barrel of oil clocked in at just...
...budgets slide into the red, and other exporters, such as Russia and Mexico, went virtually bankrupt from lost oil revenues. Finally, in the past year, OPEC's members woke up. Why should the West profit from unparalleled prosperity while they drew up austerity plans? They boosted the cost of crude by slowing production, until a barrel fetched nearly $35. Americans, like Europeans, started to grumble at the steady rise in the price they paid to gas up. By summer, U.S. drivers were paying around $1.70 per gal., Europeans anywhere from...
...Remember Saddam Hussein? With Russia and France back on their end-the-sanctions high horses, and with Iraq's U.N.-imposed 5 million b.p.d. oil-production limit looking more and more absurd the tighter the crude market gets, the Man from Baghdad is sitting in the catbird seat. With one twist of the spigot (or one move against Kuwait, for that matter) Hussein could instantly neutralize all the White House's work and humiliate the U.S. in the bargain. Think that's not tempting? Clinton, one presumes, is aware of this - and you can bet the oil traders...
...After having the weekend to contemplate the Clinton administration's debut as a player in the world crude markets, oil traders heard the sound of spigots and responded just as Bill, Al and the Eurozone had hoped. Benchmark Brent crude oil for November delivery fell by 95 cents to $30.30 per barrel in London, and even briefly hit $29.90 - the lowest intra-day level since...
...work - if heating-oil refineries already operating furiously at 95-100 percent capacities can somehow refine more oil in time for the cold weather. It will almost definitely push down the short-term market price of crude, just like it did in 1991, because the U.S. government has now signaled its willingness to be a ground-level player in the world's oil markets at times of "crisis." And that's precisely the problem: "Crisis" has just been defined dangerously down...