Word: metrication
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...Europe's citadel of unfettered free enterprise and trade liberalism, West Germany has been acting mighty odd. In the latest of a series of attempts to set prices and regulate trade, roly-poly Economics Minister Ludwig Erhard last week announced a stiff tax on fuel oil: $7.14 per metric ton (about $1 per bbl.). The punitive tax, which Erhard himself describes as a "sin" against his free-market theories, is designed to discourage the use of oil, thus ease Germany's steadily mounting coal surplus of 17 million tons...
...three years the French had refused to run a pipeline from their Edjele oilfield in the Sahara (estimated reserves: 70 million metric tons) over its natural route through Tunisia to the Mediterranean, unless French troops were allowed to stay in southern Tunisia to protect it. De Gaulle abandoned the conditions. He told Tunisian Ambassador Mohammed Masmoudi: "We are not at all opposed to Tunisia having its share of the Sahara's resources." The French and Tunisians signed an agreement to build the pipeline across Tunisia at a cost of $95 million, which will give jobs to 2,000 Tunisians...
...prosperous Japanese economy is currently feeling the pinch of recession-production is down, stockpiles and unemployment are up. Chinese steel production has quadrupled (but is still only 5,000,000 metric tons compared to Japan's 12.5 million), China's machine-tool production, doubled, is now almost on a par with Japan...
...celebration possible. Sahara oil has become one of France's main reasons for refusing to yield war-torn Algeria. Politicians have held it up as treasure trove that would restore France to riches and greatness. The Hassi Messaoud field alone has estimated reserves of at least 200 million metric tons-ten times France's present annual consumption. With two years to wait for a full-sized 24-in. pipeline from the Sahara to the Mediterranean coast, the French strung the baby pipeline across 93 miles of desert from Hassi Messaoud northward to Touggourt and widened 120 miles...
...Valley. Then, in a far more ambitious challenge, he began to move into the Middle East, offering Arab governments terms seemingly more generous than the standard fifty-fifty split negotiated by British and American companies. Under one such agreement, an E.N.I, subsidiary is now producing some 600,000 metric tons of oil a year in Egypt; others are exploring in Somaliland, negotiating in Morocco. The climax of Mattel's Middle East drive came last September, when, in return for a promise of 75% of profits,* the Iranian government gave him a 12,000-sq.-mi. exploratory concession, more than...