Word: crudely
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...That kind of good fortune, divine or not, has helped Lula, 62, a former union leader, become the country's most popular President in half a century. Even without the oil find - which could make Brazil one of the world's largest crude producers - the economy is growing vigorously, and the nation's notorious social inequality is receding. What's more, Brazil is flexing a newfound diplomatic clout as the hemisphere's first real counterweight to the U.S. (Lula led the creation of a bloc of developing nations, the G-20, to thwart U.S. and European hegemony in global trade...
That future, as Davies notes, could be dazzling. With the price of crude at one point this year reaching $147 per bbl., interest in alternative sources of oil is unprecedented. A big part of that interest comes from the U.S., India and China, which all rely on oil imports and have massive coal reserves. Feasibility studies for Sasol to build two plants in China, each projected to produce 80,000 bbl. a day by 2012, are at an advanced stage. In the U.S., Sasol is courting interest from several states, including Montana, Illinois and Wyoming, as well...
...self-evident: a small country that gained its independence only recently, after almost two centuries of Russian domination, deserves international support that goes beyond simple declarations of sympathy. Then there are questions of geostrategy. An independent Georgia is critical to the international flow of oil. A pipeline for crude oil now runs from Baku in Azerbaijan, on the Caspian Sea, through Georgia to the Turkish Mediterranean coast. The link provides the West access to the energy resources of central Asia. If that access is cut, the Western world will lose an important opportunity to diversify its sources of energy...
...filling the Kremlin's coffers. Eastern and Western Europe are heavily dependent on gas from state-owned giant Gazprom (whose former chairman happens to be Dmitri Medvedev, Putin's puppet President.) Russia's oil exports are critical at a time when the world has no spare capacity for crude. How tough, seriously, can the West be with an aggressive Russia at this moment in history...
...fellow sports nut, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, is. Though Moscow is a major oil producer and sells arms to Tehran and Syria (among others) in the Middle East, it presumably would want to avoid the crisis an Israeli strike might bring. For one thing, another big spike in crude oil prices could cripple oil demand in the west, and drive down global prices for the other commodities Russia exports. But so far Moscow has shown no public inclination to support tougher sanctions than those that already exist on Iran. A Russian government spokesman confirmed that Iran would...